


Black Widow: Deadly Origin

by fluffharpy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-21 21:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17649971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffharpy/pseuds/fluffharpy
Summary: Ex-KGB, ex-Avenger, spy, assassin, superhero and now fugitive—Natasha Romanoff is a woman who lives one step ahead of her past. One misstep is all it takes for it all to catch up to her.





	1. Chapter One

WAKANDA 09h09

_As interrogation rooms go, it’s not so bad._

An intrusive thought, wry product of a too little sleep, the nagging pain in her abdomen and too much time spent cooling her heels while she waited for her captors to decide what to do with her.

True, though.

Over the course of her career, Natasha Romanoff had seen worse. It wasn’t dark or dirty. Not the repurposed holdover from some failed industry or fallen dynasty. Not an abandoned railroad container, defunct meat packing plant, something like that. It was cramped, sure, but no one left prisoners in the luxury suite. The space occupied itself with a sterile efficiency at odds with what little Natasha had seen of Wakanda, well lit and almost entirely empty. The two chairs that faced each other across a bare table were straight backed and straight out of the textbook. In case the accommodations didn’t get the message across, the woman who kept watch with an unsympathetic eye made it perfectly clear: Natasha was not meant to be comfortable.

Two hours in, give or take a few minutes of lost time down to fatigue and low blood pressure, the door opened. The swish of the panel sliding into its pocket was the only fanfare, but with or without ceremony, T’Challa entered the room as a king. His bearings were square. His voice, benevolently superior as he broke the silence.

“You have looked better, Ms. Romanoff.”

Natasha twitched a tight-lipped smile. He wasn’t wrong. Pale, eyes hollow, skin puffy and slack from pain, Natasha looked exactly how she felt—like warmed-over shit. No amount of stoicism was going to cover that. She knew it, and he wouldn’t let her pretend he didn’t see it.

She searched his expression. She didn’t have his trust. His face told Natasha as much, and after what she pulled in Leipzig, Natasha couldn’t pretend she deserved more. His curiosity, though? It might be overgenerous with T’Challa playing his feelings close to the vest, but that she might be able to get.

“I appreciate Your Majesty’s honesty,” Natasha replied finally, not without irony.

The slow huff of air through his nose could have been amusement or exasperation. She suspected the actual answer was impatience.

“You are lucky to be alive,” he said as he took the seat across from her. Arms folded across the table, he mirrored  Natasha’s handcuffed posture. “My guards might have killed you if your injuries did not. They would have been within their rights.”

“Give them my gratitude for showing such restraint.” Her voice strained with vocal fry despite whatever humor she might have mustered. The past two days rode her shoulders like a physical weight.

A moment of quiet hung between them, the rhythm one they had established in their previous interactions.

Then the tension passed and T’Challa leaned back in his chair, his fingers lacing together before him as he shifted. Posture slightly open. Could be he was feeling less suspicious, but Natasha read another reason for the change, and if she had to make a guess, she’d say it was because he thought he’d figured something out. “Why are you here, Ms. Romanoff? Not to see me, I think, but you need something.”

“You’re right.” She didn’t deflect this time. Natasha had waited for him to ask, she had gone through the dance step by formal step, but she didn’t have the time or the energy to drag this out. “I need an ally. I’m here for Barnes.”

“What makes you think you can have him?” T’Challa followed her lead, and from the look he gave her, she had just confirmed his suspicions. “Captain Rogers entrusted his friend to me. I take that trust very seriously, and while he may have reason to be generous with you, Ms. Romanoff, I am not Captain Rogers.”

That, Natasha expected. What he added next took her by surprise.

“You are not the first Black Widow to break our nation’s borders, but if I release you, you will be the first to leave them. You will have to give me a reason why I should do you any kindness beyond that.”

It wasn’t a threat. Instead he presented her a simple statement of fact, that letting her leave his country alive would already be doing her a favor she might not have earned.

If she were honest with herself, Natasha agreed she didn’t have the grounds to argue. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to.

Lucky for her, she wasn’t here to argue.

Instead, she cast back to her lone silent guard. “Could you…?”

T’Challa’s attention followed Natasha’s to the woman who’d stood in attendance since she’d first been brought to this room. The same woman who had stared her down in Berlin. The guard’s gracefully arched eyebrows winged up further at the outside edge, giving her an unsympathetic look. There was challenge in that expression, and in her current condition, Natasha could predict which one of them would win any physical altercations.

Natasha kept that knowledge off her face, committed to her bluff.

“Ayo?” T’Challa said, his chin lifting faintly in question.

The woman—Ayo—glanced from Natasha to her king and back again before she tossed a sealed dossier on the table with a flip of the wrist.

_Don’t hold your breath_ , Natasha told herself more out of habit than because she was at risk of such an obvious tell. Her breathing, her heartbeat, even the small movements of her eyes and the rate she blinked all remained normal, but there was a tightness in her she couldn’t entirely hide as T’Challa opened the file and emptied its contents.

Papers. Documents. Most of them in code, and even the ones that weren’t encrypted written in cyrillic. They spilled across the table top, and no matter how they were turned or flipped, they revealed little. More interesting were the photos: decades old pictures, mostly black and white but faded to ivory with time. The past captured forever in glossy immortality. He flipped through them one at a time, arranging the images before him in a pattern that denoted an organized mind. He was trying to get the order of them, she thought, even though few were actually dated. Soldiers. Ballerinas. Soviet test pilots. And one of three rows of figures, all lined up for a stiff, smileless group portrait.

When he raised his head to face her, his expression was pensive. Natasha wondered if he could know how exposed she was.

Meeting his eyes, Natasha willed him to see the truth she offered and ignore what she left out, even as his questions piled up. “With the information I’m after you might be able to break his conditioning for good, but I need his help to get it back.”

“Ayo,” T’Challa said without missing his mark. Any sense of victory Natasha felt was undermined by the sinking in the pit of her stomach, the certainty that he guessed just how much it cost her her show him that picture. “Tell Amahle to start the end stasis protocol for our guest.”

Natasha smiled, even if she couldn’t make herself mean it.


	2. Chapter Two

TUNIS, 37 HOURS EARLIER

Two bags lay out on one of two single beds, one of them open. Natasha turned through the contents, as organized as she could keep them under the circumstances. Files, envelopes, maps, what she still carried of her gear, and there beneath the false bottom, a battered paper sack half full of stacks of bills. She fingered through them. Not as much as she’d like, but enough to do.

She took two stacks and shoved them in her inner jacket pocket. The sack went back in its compartment, hidden behind her suitcase’s polyester lining.

A year since Natasha and the Avengers parted ways, and look how far she’d fallen—living out of bags, dealing in cash, not even bothering to unpack because she’d be gone again in a couple of weeks. The laptop on the table of her studio flat represented the nerve center of her current operation. She shook her head. The inventory was constant, taken in glances over her shoulder and brushes past by her bed, subtle touches to make sure her papers, her guns, her burners were where they should be. One thorough cleaning and no one would be able to tell she was here in the first place.

It was a far cry from having Stark Industries backing her work, but she had to travel light.

At least she was good at it.

Beside her computer on the small dining table, Natasha’s phone vibrated. She picked it up and gave the screen a cursory glance to confirm it was the message she was waiting for rather than actually read it. Then the phone went in her pocket too. She closed the laptop, dropped the cold cup of coffee she’d been sipping all afternoon in the sink and grabbed her keys before she went down three flights of stairs and out into the world.

The sun was on the descent when she left her building. Hadn’t been much of a view in the flat, the blinds drawn and facing the wall of the neighboring tenement, but outdoors there was no way to miss it. Amber and gold light slanted across the pale façades and a cluster of busy streets, and in the distance struck off the waters of the Mediterranean. In an hour, it all be twilight blue and a different kind of beautiful, but now it was dazzling. Natasha put on her sunglasses and stepped into the flow of foot traffic.

There was a trick to moving in a crowd and not being noticed. Exactly how to do it depended on where you were, different people moving differently, different places guided by different rules. To pull it off right, you had to know how close to stand to stand to the person walking next to you, how fast to move, whether the locals walked with purpose or whether they ambled, and more importantly whether they noticed tourists. The gist was simple. Find the flow and stick with it. She’d told Steve once that the first rule of going on the run was don’t run, walk. That was part of it, but only the most basic level.

Some places, you knew you couldn’t really be part of the crowd, and that was fine. You didn’t have to be part of it. You didn’t have to be part of it to get lost in it. Natasha walked just a little faster than the foot traffic on her street, moving like she had somewhere to be. Not in a rush. Not frantic or pushing through groups. Not impatient. Any of those things might have drawn attention to her. But act like you knew where you were going and how to get there, and on some level, most people believed you. It was a good habit, especially when over a hundred countries wanted you arrested and more than a few wouldn’t mind you dead.

Natasha didn’t take the most direct route, another habit, moving anonymously and making good time into an older, less French influenced part of the city. The streets became narrower and more shadowed, the ground less even, but the views she passed no less stunning. She sidestepped a couple of Italians on holiday taking pictures down a narrow alley toward the sea, catching a wall covered with climbing jasmine and no fewer than three stray cats in the frame, and turned down one of the wider streets, now almost entirely sunless.

Third door on the right and she stepped lightly up three stairs to dodge inside.The bell rang on the pull.

“We’re closing,” said the woman behind the counter. She was short, with black curls falling across her forehead and large, expressive eyes that telegraphed her recognition—positive—when they lit on Natasha.

“I’ll get the sign.”

The shop was small, an irregular L shape, with the counter in front and double shelves down the longer leg, piled with books. Most of them were mass market paperbacks. Romance novels. Mystery thrillers. Not much science-fiction, though a bright orange tag at the end of the aisle pointed out where they could be found. No travel section. It wasn’t that kind of book store.

“You’re early,” Meriem told Natasha as she joined her at the register. “I wasn’t expecting you for another fifteen minutes or so.”

Shrugging, Natasha rocked back on her heels. “I left when I got your text.”

“You must have.” Those expressive eyes took in Natasha, and in one look they saw everything. Freshly short haircut, minimalist makeup, and her de facto uniform of jacket and jeans despite the day’s heat. She saw Natasha’s posture and the purpose in her expression, however pleasantly composed. “You’re leaving soon, I take it.”

“Well.” Natasha tucked her hands behind her back rather than lay them on the counter, tilting her head to her two o’clock as she conceded the statement, then revised it. “Let’s say I want to be ready when the time comes.”

“Soon.” Meriem reiterated her statement, not a question.

“Sooner than later.”

A huff, and wide-eyed skepticism.

Natasha quirked a smile in the face of Meriem’s curiosity. She trusted the other woman, liked her as much as she liked any of her contacts, but Natasha wasn’t obligated to explain herself. She never had been, and she didn’t intend to start today.

“In that case,” Meriem said after a brief silence, “I better get your order. Hang on a minute.” She closed the register and slipped out from behind the counter, rubbing small hands on the front of her blouse. “If you’d been another ten or fifteen minutes, I’d have had it ready for you.”

With a half turn Natasha put her back to the counter and to the long side of the room. She swept her gaze across the street outside from behind her sunglasses, marking the positions of the few bystanders across the way—pair of locals smoking cigarettes in a stoop, tourist in a polo shirt down the street consulting his phone, vagrant on the corner nodding toward a hat on the ground by his foot—before looking over her shoulder to check on Meriem. “It’s better this way. We can catch up.” She said it lightly, half joking. “How’s your husband?”

“Karim’s doing fine.” Meriem disappeared into the small office where she did her accounts and ran her other business. Voice raised, she continued the conversation as she went through her her desk. Natasha could hear a lock box opening. “The new clinic’s finally up and running, so he’s back to work. I love that man—”

Riffling through the lock box, just for a few seconds.

“—but I love him better when he’s busy. You know what they’re like when they have too much time on their hands.”

Natasha hummed, noncommittal. “Some people are like that. Don’t know what to do with themselves when they’re not working.”

“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Meriem reappeared, a legal envelope in her hands. 

“I have no idea what you mean,” Natasha said. Slipping the stack of bills out of her jacket and onto the countertop with a subtle movement, she looked forward again. The locals were talking more animatedly. The tourist looked lost, his gaze going back and forth between his phone and either egress on the street. The panhandler hadn’t moved as far as Natasha could see. “In fact, I don’t have another job lined up, so if you know anyone…”

She let that statement trail off. The meaning was clear enough, hanging in the air unsaid.

“Not off the top of my head. Maybe some corporate work, but none up to your usual standards.” Corporate espionage, she meant. Natasha wrinkled her nose over her shoulder. As she watched, Meriem laid the contents of the envelope out on the counter with the same nonchalance she might ring up a couple of paperbacks; passports, one American blue and another Russian red, driver's licenses, social security, credit cards. “But there’d be some good money in it, if you’re willing. Interesting things going on in business now. Just about everyone on the continent is trying to find their angle to get in with the new king in Wakanda. I’ve heard talk about a trade deal. I doubt any legitimate governments would risk hiring you, but plenty of companies smell blood in the water.”

Meriem shrugged. Natasha frowned.

“You’re right, it doesn’t sound like my kind of job.”

“Too bad, but I figured.” Natasha’s money disappeared behind the counter and her purchase went back in its envelope, pressed discreetly into Natasha’s hand. “Though if you ever change your mind, you know who to talk to.”

“You’ll be the first person I ask—Meriem?”

The other woman made a sound, not quite a word, in question, as she leaned closer. The note in Natasha’s voice was not lost on her. She followed Natasha’s gaze out the store’s glass door and onto the street.

“How long has that sightseer been there?”

Maybe fifteen meters away, diagonal to their position, the tourist was still lingering over the screen on his smartphone. For just an instant, Natasha thought she’d seen his gaze snap up and fix on her. Not a chance moment where he happened to be looking at nothing in her direction, or something nearby. It was quick, but she was almost sure of it. Meriem leaned against the counter beside her, Natasha could feel her without looking.

The quiet lasted just the count of two, and it was answer enough.

The tourist looked up again, sweat on his face in the reflected light.

“Shit,” Natasha hissed, turning and taking Meriem’s arm across the counter. She pulled her around and the two of them moved toward the office. “No back door. Window?”

“In the office,” Meriem murmured, dropping her voice.

“Does it open?”

“Yes—”

“Grab anything you don’t want confiscated. Quick. Now.” Natasha pushed Meriem through the door first, glancing back over her shoulder, casual, natural. The agent was on his phone, walking a line for the front door. The set of his furrowed brow, the teeth bared in a grimace of confusion, said he knew he’d been made and that it was sooner than he’d hoped. Too early yet to tell if that was a good sign.

Meriem’s office was pocket sized and looked like the small woman was doing her best to squeeze both of her businesses and a desk into a space that might have made an adequate walk-in closet. Meriem didn’t waste time, grabbing what she needed and making it disappear up her sleeves while Natasha shoved open the narrow window tucked up under the ceiling.

“Up,” Natasha directed when the shop door opened with a jingle, giving Meriem a hand to climb out. It just took a little boost, a little hop and Meriem was sliding out and into another alley.

Natasha followed seconds later, just in time to hear the command to stop, given first in English then French.

Arm around Meriem’s shoulders, Natasha picked a direction and started walking. Not too quick, not fast enough to attract attention, but with a determined clip. “Which way’s the biggest crowd?” Natasha asked, voice pitched not to travel. “You make the call.”

She might have done her research, but Meriem lived here and she knew the life. When she turned to the left and took an uphill spoke at the next intersection, Natasha followed her lead as easily as if they’d both known the direction from the beginning. From there, Meriem took another sharp left and up a narrow foot stair to a higher street.

Chancing a glance as they disappeared, Natasha spotted another tourist, different, speaking furiously into a cell phone that he held the way a military man held a radio, and down the street further, a woman in a suit, hair up in a ponytail that had probably looked professional earlier in the day before their trap sprung prematurely and turned into a foot chase with her head bent forward and to one side as she plowed through the thinning crowd.

“Keep moving,” Natasha whispered, and Meriem did.

“Who are they?” Meriem whispered back, grim.

Wincing, Natasha said, “Can’t say. Not locals.”

That didn’t mean they weren’t cooperating with local authorities. Natasha had been wanted in more than a dozen countries before violating the Sokovia Accords, and after it would be easier to list the number of law enforcement agencies that didn’t have an interest in getting their hands on her. 

What it did mean was that they didn’t blend in. At least, not all of them.

Natasha would take what she could get.

“They’re not here for you,” she continued as the stair emptied them onto another sidewalk. At the next block, Natasha could see the wider cross street was bright and busy with restaurants and bars. “Lose them. Lay low for a while. If they pick you up, I was just business. You didn’t even know my real name.”

“You think they’ll believe I don’t know who you are?” 

They hit the cross street and turned together, Natasha giving Meriem a little more room. She didn’t have an answer, so she didn’t bother trying to give one.

“If you can…” she said instead, “don’t get caught.”

Meriem looked over her shoulder, then at the semi-transparent reflections in the windows facing them, finally giving a huff. “Still being followed,” she said. Natasha nodded. She continued, “We both go in one of the bars. I’ll join a big group. You leave through the back. They’ll look for me, but they’ll follow you.”

Another nod in confirmation. Natasha picked up her pace, eyeing the signs. “Pick somewhere rowdy.”

Rowdy ended up being a dive club sprawling through most of the ground floor of a colonial building, neon lights and North African guitar rock spilling out the front door at odds with its weathered, rigid dignity. Despite the the fact the evening was young, sun barely set, there was already a healthy crowd moving in and out. Meriem shot Natasha a questioning look and got a tip of the head, accepting the choice. 

The two of them weaved through the line to get in, staying close for the moment, but mostly because neither of them wanted to risk time getting inside when the snare was closing around them. Already, they were doing their best to turn it into a shell game, breaking up their silhouettes as a pair, momentarily attaching themselves to club goers. Natasha put a wobble in her step, tottering and laughing beside a confused but not unwelcoming man as he passed the doorman. Inside, she broke away from him, picking her way past the bar and toward the bathrooms and the kitchen.

On a look back, she saw Meriem invite herself to a seat at one of the booths, a smile on her face as she leaned in to talk to a bewildered looking young woman with a look of perfect recognition on her face. The group she picked was already showing signs that the drinks they’d had earlier were working on them, and were more than willing to take in someone claiming to be a cousin or a friend of a friend.

At the door, the woman from before with the ponytail, was scanning the crowd. Their eyes met.

Natasha hooked her arm through a stranger’s, someone about Meriem’s size, hissing a quick apology and direction to play along as she dragged the surprised woman away from the bathroom and toward the service exit. Their tail saw Natasha and her companion making a break for it, just as she expected and her mouth moved, passing the information on to some team member still outside. Then Natasha’s attention was firmly ahead of her again, pulling the stranger with her as she ducked out the service door.

In the gloom of the alley behind the club, Natasha let her unwitting accomplice go with, “I’m sorry,” whispered quickly in French.

From there she made for the nearest major artery. This time, she wasn’t trying to get away. Not yet. There was more she needed to know before she vanished.

With Meriem on her own, Natasha was free to change tactics. And, with any luck, her new strategy would have the benefit of keeping her pursuers’ attention fixed firmly on her long enough for Meriem free to slip free entirely. Instead of turning away from the agents, whoever they were, and putting as much room between them and her as she could as fast as she could, Natasha turned back toward them, crossing the wide thoroughfare up the street from a man wearing a suit coat and no tie, dark glasses hiding his eyes even after the sun had gone down. She didn’t pause to see if he saw her; she knew that out of her line of sight, he was relaying her last position to his team.

From there the game was on. Tunis was a beautiful city, layers of time and culture built on top of each other and eroded away to reveal the strata. Modern piled on top, ancient jutting through sporadically. The kind of place you could only take full advantage of by thinking three dimensionally. In the next alley, Natasha vaulted from the back of a dumpster up to a fire escape, pulling herself up the rusted ladder and up. From there, it was up to the roof.

But not without being spotted.

If she knew her patterns, knew the way that they’d be sweeping, if she knew the holes that would be opening in their net, then there should be eyes up here somewhere, someone getting orders right now not, repeat, not to intercept. Hold position and wait for backup. 

And if she knew her pattern, if she had the lay of the block and if she knew the playbook, then that backup should pop up just about—

The agent emerged from the rooftop access on the neighboring building: clean cut kid, short black hair and dark eyes that were too innocent for this line of work. He walked right into Natasha. Even if he’d been prepared, he wouldn’t have been enough for her. A quick punch knocked the air from his lungs and light finger pulled the gun from his shoulder holster, turning it back on him.

She flashed him a quick, professional smirk. The sort of expression that said not to take it personally. The sort that said he didn’t have a chance to start with.

“Hi,” she said, brusque. “I have a couple of questions.”

The kid gaped, mouth hanging slack and brows furrowed in surprise. His hands hovered purposely in the air just below his shoulder. He hadn’t even decided to surrender. Not exactly. It was just something that happened as he stood there in shock and tried to catch his breath.

“I’m not telling you anything,” he answered too late to be convincing. 

Natasha responded with a quick blow to his nose with the butt of his own gun. “Wrong answer.”

The kid took the hit, recovered, looked hurt. Maybe he’d thought better of her. People thinking Natasha was a hero created certain expectations; those expectations didn’t always line up to the fact.

He was going to learn that real fast

“Question one: who tipped you off?

“I’m not compromising our source—” Another blow, sharp and deliberate.

“I don’t like repeating myself. Don’t make me do it again.”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?” he pressed. “I don’t believe it. You’re an Avenger. You might be a fugitive, but people don’t change that easy.”

“Wrong answer.” Natasha’s wrist snapped to the left side, positioning the barrel of the kid’s pistol just beside his ear as her finger squeezed the trigger. The jolt that went through him in response was physical, both hands coming up too late to protect his ears, eyes blinking rapidly in an attempt to clear his head.

In a quick move, Natasha switched hands, the gun held threatening beside his head.

“You’re right. I won’t shoot you.” She raised her voice, maybe not enough to be heard over the ringing in his ears. Didn’t matter. He already knew what she wanted to know. “You want to try my bluff.”

“—It was anonymous,” he blurted out as though the words would shield him. Maybe he didn’t believe she’d kill him, but apparently she’d convinced him that she wasn’t above rupturing his eardrum. “No name. We verified it. Came up good. I swear.”

Natasha let her breath out through her teeth, mouth turned down in a frown. “I believe you.”

He blinked, maybe not even hearing the words. Still staggered, the young agent didn’t put up a fight as Natasha grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him away from the door, planting a foot on his chest. The kick sent him tottering over the edge of the building. The wide eyed look of betrayal as he fell stuck with her. 

Then she hesitated. She should go, but first a glance, a quick look over the edge. Below, the kid hit a balcony, people around him already in a panicked flurry from the gunshot that had interrupted their evening drinks. He was still looking up at her.

He wasn’t going to feel good, but he’d live. 

Natasha could make peace with herself for that. 

She’d already wasted too much time. 

Shaking herself from her moment of conscience, Natasha sprinted across the rooftop and over the edge, jumping the alley separating her from the neighboring building’s fire escape. The climb down dropped her in a narrow space, barely a pathway between the two structures and angling sharply uphill. Pulling up her collar, she looked over her shoulder. No one waited at the bottom of the alley this time. 

Too soon to relax, but she turned and strode up the hill. Time to disappear.

Up the alley to the street, then dodging around a corner, slipping down a narrow sweep of stairs, curved with the irregular shape of a whitewashed wall. Natasha never saw the shot that caught her. It came from behind and above, the impact taking her in the back. It was a surprise, but not unfamiliar.

Not a bullet. A tasing device. The shock was a sizzling impact firing along every nerve. Natasha dropped to the ground in a heap, limbs unresponsive.

“The legendary Black Widow.” A woman’s voice, accompanied by the sound of stacked heels hitting pavement. Subtle as they were, the rolled r and hard consonants struck with a visceral recognition, even speaking English. “To think you’re the one they hold over me. Is it that the myth outgrew the reality?”

Natasha rolled onto her back. Her hands flexed and stretched as she worked feeling back into them.

“Or has age made you soft?” The woman stood over her with an easy grace, comfortable in her body in the way only someone who’s been trained to view their body as a tool has to be. She held herself the way a butcher holds a cleaver. Young. Pretty. Blond hair cut to shoulder length around a heart shaped face with full lips and wide set inscrutable eyes. She had the sort of expression that people—men—liked to project on, seeing whatever they wanted in the twitch of a lip or the angle of an eyebrow. The kind of look that implied a lot but committed to nothing.

The resemblance was not lost no Natasha. Even their clothes were similar. Light jacket. Dark jeans. Knee boots. The uniform hadn’t changed much, and it stuck.

The Red Room selected for a type.

“You’re losing your edge.” Tone dripping disdain as she continued.

Natasha didn’t waste energy arguing. Words weren’t going to win that fight anyway.

She got as far as kicking out at her attacker’s knee before the second Widow’s Bite hit her in the chest. The second one hit her harder than the first, arching her back and making her heart skip a beat. Her mouth gaped silently as her body acted out of her control.

“If you ever had one to start with.” Expression neutral but satisfaction palpable in the air, the younger woman stood over her.

“So what, you have something to prove?” Natasha panted out. Time to change tactic. She didn’t have a plan for that yet, but she could buy a little time.

“Me?” The girl almost laughed just saying the word, her expression shaped into an approximation of pity that couldn’t disguise her amusement. “Hardly. But I have to admit, I’m having fun showing off. Everything you’ve done so far has been so—”She took a breath, glancing up theatrically as she searched for a word she already had. “So predictable.”

A switchblade appeared in her hand. Pocket hidden up her sleeve, just against the seam.

“I have a different mission, though.”

“Shit—” Natasha just had time to hiss before the other woman crouched down over her. Before she pulled up Natasha’s jacket, before she stabbed Natasha with deliberate intention just under the lower curve of her abdomen.

She didn’t stop there. The woman opened her up centimeter by centimeter, until there was a hole big enough for two fingers to fit in.

There was no time left to plan. No time to do anything. Natasha could feel her options bleeding away as her skin and muscle parted. The knife was sharp, sharp enough that it wasn’t the pain that struck her first, but the sense of being invaded. The feeling of something  _ in _ her body. Pain, obscuring that sense of the exact shape of the knife as it opened her up, burning in a thankfully generalized way, was almost welcome.

She bit her lip and reached for whatever she could—whatever was on hand. Instinct more than memory guided her as she reached under the girl’s coat and groped for something she had no reason to believe she’d find other than faith that if the girl knew her tricks, the Red Room’s training hadn’t changed so much in the decades since it produced her.

Relief as her hand wrapped around the canister shape, a sigh, weak smile—she tossed the flashbang off to one side, closing her eyes tightly and throwing her free arm over her face in time to save her sight.

Nothing to save her hearing. Nothing to save her from the concussive force, either, disorienting her senses. Still, she knew it was coming and that was an advantage too. 

Natasha was ready for the stun when it hit.The girl, balanced over her, was not. Natasha pulled the knife out with shaking hands, pressing her hand hard over the wound as she kicked up. Her core muscles all  protested and she regretted it immediately, but the girl stumbled back off of her and Natasha scrambled up to her feet.

Her head spun as she got her legs under her, the grenade or blood loss shaking her. She had only seconds to get away, stumbling to safety.

Over her shoulder, she could hear cursing in Russian and the impact of a Widow’s Bite hitting the wall behind her.

She didn’t stop and she didn’t look back.


	3. Chapter Three

The gurney was cold, seeping through her thin surgical gown and chilling her skin. She tried to push herself up, but there was a hand there. Strong. Male. Pushing her down. The memory came at her hard and sharp: the graduation.

Wait, no.

There were two figures above her. One, the Madame. The other just as well known, an older man watching her with serious eyes and a sympathetic frown behind the curve of his mustache. There’s something careworn about him. The thought comes into her head,  _ He hasn’t been sleeping enough. _

She turned her head to the side, trying to get her bearings. This isn’t how it happened.

Forceps glared threatening from a tray beside her.

The IV in her arm.

“Are you sure about this, Natalia?” he asked.

“Do it.” She heard her own voice, disconnected from her senses or her control.

No, wai—the film slows, starts to melt, but she can’t turn away—

This wasn’t real. It—

Someone leaned over her, a surgical mask hiding a man’s face. There was a speculum in his hand, then no, a syringe. Someone off to the side spoke about anesthetic. The words weren’t entirely clear, spoken in broken, dizzy Russian. “She’s not responding to the drugs,” someone said.

She shook her head, wrestling with her perceptions. She was drugged. She had been drugged. She just needed too—

The doctor standing over her was different. Younger. Dark olive skin. He didn’t wear glasses, and his clothing was mussed— he hadn’t expected to be working tonight. Natasha tensed to surge off the table. She had to—

There was no syringe. Instead he held a suturing needle in gloved fingers. The words that came from behind his mask were unintelligible at first because Natasha’s clouded thoughts expected Russian, not French. When she recognized the language, suddenly the meaning came into clear focus.

“Karim.” Natasha relaxed back on the table. It wasn’t the gurney from her vision any more, but a clean new hospital bed in a sparsely furnished space that must have been the new clinic. It didn’t seem used yet. It only barely looked finished, some of the equipment still covered in plastic sheets. “How did I get here?”

“You tell me,” he said, returning to his stitching. “You’re the one who showed up at my door after hours, holding your guts in with your bare hands.”

A tired snort was all the response Natasha could muster. She didn’t remember anything after she slipped away from her the blonde on the stair, not anything clear, but obviously she managed somehow.

“Meriem?”

He shook his head, then shrugged. “Got a call from her a while back. She doesn’t know you’re here. I figured it better all around to keep that need to know.”

“Thanks.”

“For keeping you a secret or patching you back together?”

“Let’s say both.” She winced, letting her eyes stay closed for a moment. “It’s been a rough night.”

“So I see.” Karim said it dryly, sighing. “The good news is that I’m almost done here, and considering no one’s come by asking questions yet, I don’t think they’re going to. Meriem and I have always been very careful to make sure her business and mine weren’t associated.”

Even if the two of them occasionally saw the same clients. The same people who needed forged documents were known to need a doctor who could keep quiet from time to time. Natasha always assumed Meriem had introduced him to this world. She realized now that she didn’t know for sure.

“Not to pry,” Karim continued, his tone acerbic, “but what is this thing someone wants badly enough to perform amature abdominal surgery in the street?”

“What?” Natasha tried to push herself up on her elbows, only to be gently pushed back down. She relented only because the instinct to look at him, that she’d know what he was talking about if she could see his face, didn’t do her any good.

“If you could please  _ try _ not to sit up for at least a few minutes after I sew you back up, I would appreciate it. I don’t like wasting my time.”

“Don’t worry,” Natasha said, suddenly dry mouthed. “I’ll make sure you’re paid for it.”

“Appreciated, but that’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” She sighed, rubbing eyes that suddenly felt grimy. “What I don’t know is what you mean. What were they after?”

“That thing inside you,” Karim said as though that would make it clearer. It didn’t.  He tried again. “The thing tethered to your uterus.”

“That’s a permanent contraceptive device.” The fight went out of her, defeat that was about more than just running into a dead end. “It’s been there… a long time. It’s not that.”

“It’s not.” He must have seen the confusion bunch Natasha’s brows then, because he insisted: “It’s not. I’m not an OBGYN, but I know contraceptives when I see them. This is something else.”

A minute earlier, Natasha would have said that the bottom couldn’t fall out of her stomach. That she was too low to drop further. She would have been wrong. Suddenly there were no floor beneath her, a sort of vertigo that left her lightheaded even lying back on the clinic table.

For a full five seconds, she focused only on breathing. Inhale, feel her heartbeat throb in her chest, exhale. The structure under her felt so insubstantial. She could have slipped through it right to the ground.

Too slow, she brought her shock under control.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” Karim confirmed.

Natasha huffed, the closest she could come to laughing just now.

“I mean it. I have you on fluids, but that will only help so much. You’ll need time to recover.”

“I’ll be fine.” That was a lie, but one she told herself as much as him. “Just—tell me what it looked like.”

Then, when he didn’t answer, “The thing inside me, describe it to me.”

“Describe it?” He repeated incredulously. She could almost picture his face, thick black brows peaked incredulously. Natasha couldn’t blame him, but since they weren’t about to cut her back open to get it out, this was their only choice.

“It’s about, say, a centimeter across and three or three and a half long. Metallic, but black on one end, and there’s a spot on it, maybe. Almost looked like a light that wasn’t on, but I can’t say for sure. It was in a silicone sleeve, and someone seems to have grafted it directly to your reproductive system. Not sure I could get it out without a full hysterectomy. To be honest, I was more concerned with making sure you weren’t about to bleed out than I was getting a good look at the thing. I’m surprised it hasn’t given you any trouble before now, but I guess whoever put it in there knew what they were doing well enough it wouldn’t interfere with your work.”

Natasha grimaced as his conclusion; not because it was wrong, but because he couldn’t have been more right. The people who put that in her had no higher priority than making sure she could complete her missions.

“Natasha.” He drew out the word slowly, each syllable as careful as a footstep through a minefield. “Do you know why someone was poking around inside of you?”

“Not yet,” Natasha said grimly. “But I will soon.”

  
  
  


Easier said than done.

As much as Natasha wanted to be off Karim’s table and out of his hair, she wasn’t ready to run out the door just yet. She wasn’t even ready to stand up until she finished the bag of fluids she was on. She filled that time as well as she could, planning her next move while she waited. She would have loved to say that by the time she left, she’d figured the whole situation out, had a plan of attack; she didn’t, but it gave her time to clear her head. She’d had time to consider her situation and her resources. Telling Karim goodbye, just shy of midnight, Natasha new her next step.

“Are you sure you won’t run? With Meriem’s connections, you could be in a hospital in Tangier by morning. Fake name. Painkillers.” Karim looked grey around the eyes, tired and drained. “I don’t like saving your life just to have you throw it away.”

“Thank you,” Natasha told him, answering the question by not answering it. She drew a breathing nodding once. “Tell Miriem I got out okay. And thank her too.”

A second later, he mirrored the gesture and nodded his own agreement. “Just be careful.”

“You too.”

That was step one. Clint would have called it gimme, and he wouldn’t be wrong, but that was the trick in situations like this. Break the problem down. Make each task, each step, manageable. Hope that you didn’t run out of next steps.

Step two was getting somewhere safe. After what had happened so far tonight, it was clear her covers here were compromised, and there was no way of knowing just how much either the CIA or her Russian assailant might have on her. She had to assume the apartment was a loss, possibly already searched. That meant she couldn’t go back, and it meant she couldn’t go anywhere that might have been connected to anything she’d left behind. She wasn’t entirely without resources. She had cash on her and emergency accounts set up, so there was money. Not unlimited, but enough that it wasn’t the most pressing concern. Weapons, could be better but she wasn’t entirely empty handed either. Garrote. A couple of Stings. Utility knife. Not as much as she’d like, but in her current condition “safe” didn’t mean defensible, it meant anonymous.

It meant she needed to find a hotel that would take cash. And there you had it: manageable. It wasn’t comfortable getting to street with enough traffic to flag down a cab. Walking hurt. Stairs hurt like hell. Keeping the pain off her face might have been the real challenge as she forced her muscles to work through the pain. Natasha was trained for that, though. For all of it.

A cab stopped. “A hotel,” Natasha told the driver in French. “No credit cards. No questions.”

She slipped him a hundred euros. The driver hesitated only a second and a half before nodding. He took the money. He didn’t ask questions.

It went like that. She’d blow through her money fast if she kept it up, but nothing else for it. She paid the driver more when she got out. She paid the owner of the hotel he brought her to for a ground floor room, and she paid the owner’s nephews to run some errands for her. She couldn’t go out herself. It didn’t take too much talking to get them to agree to go out, to get her a couple of computers.

And then, then, she was actually making progress.

It was 05:14 local time when Natasha brought a Frankenstein’s monster of a computer online, cobbled together from whatever she could get, from whoever Aziz and Khalil could wake up in the middle of the night. Not exactly bleeding edge tech, but if she was right, it didn’t have to be. It just had to be good enough.

Natasha watched the screen, barely blinking, barely breathing, as she keyed through commands that she hadn’t used in decades.

It took a moment. This wasn’t as easy as finding a new printer. If she didn’t know what to look for, she’d never have found it. But there, just like all those years ago…

_ Signal acquired. _

A sigh, but the relief was short lived. “What the hell did you put in me?”


	4. Chapter Four

MUNICH, 1987

Infiltration job. Natasha’s specialty. She wore a body conscious black dress with a wide cowl neck. Security didn’t give her a second look as she passed the first checkpoint Her ticket to tonight’s party was Uwe Braun, a business moghul in his mid-forties with dark hair salted with silver at the temples and a noted weakness for dancers. She rode his arm past security and up the elevator, to the forty-fourth floor of a sleek new high rise that was playing host to a business gala. A communications company that had just landed an expansive government contract.

It was a tempting prize.

“Champagne, darling?” Braun asked.

Natasha lifted her chin. A superficial smile curled her lips.. “Get me a glass. I’ll meet up with you in a moment.”

Then, when his brows teased together in confusion, well short of suspicion, she added, “Little girls’ room.”

He smiled in return and turned her loose into the crowd of suited men and women in brightly colored dresses. She floated through them with chilly confidence and a dancer’s grace. In the hall, she took off her heels and padded toward the stairs.

There was a guard on the door. A well placed bullet put him down, dead before he could even register the fall. With a silencer, the party’s attendees didn’t even hear it over the music. She dragged his body into the stairwell, giving the splatter a quick wipe down. It wouldn’t hold up to a forensic investigation, but at a glance it would do.

Two floors up, another guard. This one on patrol. Single shot to the back of the head.

A third taken out unprepared from behind, this time with a wire around his neck. According to her intel, there shouldn’t be another within earshot. She lowered him to the ground slowly as his body went slack. She used his keycard to open the next door.

Inside, the real target. Natasha looked on without appreciating what, she was sure, represented a wealth of information, all stored on long banks of computers. She also didn’t appreciate the pinnacle of the KGB’s secret research division. Her interest was  in the convenience of the device they’d given her. A sort of flattened metallic tube with a black cap on one end. When she wired it into the computer terminal, a tiny nub lit up blue to verify the connection.

Fifteen minutes later, she was on an elevator down, leaving Braun with his champagne.

Natasha was out the door, heels tapping steadily away from the scene to her getaway car as the first sirens blared to life.

  
  
  


It wasn’t sleep. Not real sleep. Keeping an eye on the download as the progress bar slowly filled, it was easy to drift in and out. Memories that she hadn’t considered in years surfaced and refused to be banished. Questions she rarely allowed herself to entertain dug firmly into the back of her mind.

Her abdomen throbbed steady and angry under one hand. She could picture the thing inside of her just as Karim had described it, the way someone might picture a spider in a dark hole or a monster hiding under the bed. Only this time, it was real. It was real, and Natasha knew what it was. These days, it wouldn’t be all that impressive. At a glance, it was only a little more complicated than the kind of thumb drive you could pick up at any office supply store. The information they’d imagined it holding had been so much less complex. But over  twenty-five years ago, it had been something special. Data that would have had to be saved on boxes and boxes of floppy disks contained in device that could be hidden inside a fake tube of lipstick. They’d had so few advantages in the standoff against the West, but their scientists were as good as anywhere in the world, and sometimes they made something like that.

Why was it there? And why was it relevant after all this time. The blonde from before hadn’t even been born yet when the wall came down.

The progress bar crept up slowly:  41%

Only one way to know for sure, and it was still hours away. Until then, she could sit and spin up theories what she might be hiding inside her body or she could try to do something productive.

She should sleep. 

Heaving a sigh that pulled at her injury, Natasha dragged herself up to her feet. Her head swam at first. A moment of standing very still, her breathing controlled, her posture stubborn, cleared it. Carefully, she crossed the small hotel room and equally carefully she opened the door. The owner’s nephews perched on the guard rail of the open air hall, sneakered feet tucked up against the stucco. With the money she’d been throwing at them, it wasn’t surprising. It also wasn’t as discreet as she might have liked, but just now it was in her favor.

“Hey,” she caught one of them in her gaze. “Aziz, want to make a couple more dollars?”

He was the older of the two. She wasn’t sure if he was smarter than his brother, but he was more observant and more cautious. Khalil jumped down first, but Natasha shook her head. 

“I only need one of you for this. Two might raise questions.”

None of them wanted questions.

Aziz slipped down more slowly, hands falling into his pockets of his red hoodie as he shrugged. “ _ Eh bien _ ,” he said more slowly. “What do you need?”

“At my old place, there’s a file I’d like to get back. Rather not go get it myself.” She hadn’t told them why she was staying here. She figured they realized she wasn’t entirely on the up and up. So far, they hadn’t seemed to mind. As long as no one asked for an explanation, Natasha didn’t bother to give one. “I could give you my key. You pick it up for me.”

“Trouble?” he asked, keeping it short.

A shrug. “Maybe. If there is, then don’t go in. You can keep the money either way.”

His expression eased up a little. He was still young, maybe in his mid-teens. Natasha’s lips tightened a little. Not her finest moment. Then he lifted one shoulder, head tilted. “Okay. I’ll have a look.”

“Thanks.”

“What about the message?” Khalil cut in. Blurted. He didn’t quite bounce up on his toes, but his weight shifted forward. 

“What message?” Natasha’s glance cut from one boy to the other. Khalil: excited and curious. Aziz: uncertain.

“What message?”

  
  
  


TUNIS, 21 HOURS EARLIER

Inside the cafe was as bright as out, stark white sunlight glaring off clean white walls and linoleum tile. Natasha kept her aviators on. It seemed like it should be warm, but there was something clammy about the air—or maybe it was just Natasha, her skin filmed with cold sweat.

A quick glance took account of the dining room: six booths, four of them occupied, none full. Four tables, two seats each, all empty. One waiter. The smell of coffee was strong enough to turn her stomach, bitter in her mouth. To the right, two familiar faces. The first, blonde from the night before, looked well-rested with her clean hair and glossed lips, but sour. The second was weathered with age in the way that makes a man look craggy and hard,  face stern behind his thick mustache even as he smiled. It was a face Natasha had seen most recently in a hallucination.

She resisted the urge to pull her jacket tighter as she approached. Even on the Mediterranean there was a chill, she was sure of it. Without a word, she sat across from them. None of the pain she was in showed through her sunglasses. She couldn’t do anything about the pallor. 

Seconds passed in silence. Tense, but not awkward. Not uncomfortable. 

There was a familiarity to it.

The waiter brought three cups. Natasha’s lips twitched in silent acknowledgement; he’d taken the liberty of ordering for her. The waiter excused himself, and they all situated their coffee carefully, stirred in sugar. No one took cream. The old man had the chance to taste his, the other two silent as he savored his first sip.

No one else drank.

It was only after he set his cup back down and his contented sigh had room to breathe that anyone broke the silence.

“Ah, Natalia,” he said in a voice that was gravelly without being deep, and recognition made the hair on the back of Natasha’s neck stand up. “It’s been so long. Is that anyway to greet your father after all of these years?”

Natasha nudged her cup away from her. A whine of protest, ceramic against the laminate tabletop.

“Is she one of yours too?”

“Not like you.” He took another drink. His air was deceptively easy. Patient. Not quite affable, even in his old age. He was imposingly large, taking up far more than his half of the bench. The blonde ceded space to him easily, letting him close, but not brushing his shoulder or arm even as he shifted. “Yelena didn’t take my name.”

Natasha’s gaze flicked toward the girl only an instant, then back. “I’m sure Yelena has a name of her own.”

“Taras,” Yelena said. Impatient. Impertinent, even.

Taras Romanov chuckled. “I must apologize for her. Yelena is talented. More talented than you were, if the tests are to be believed.” He made the dig at both of them, the criticism almost paternal. “But she’s very young and the world doesn’t teach children patience like it used to. Or humility.”

Behind his mustache, Natasha could see his smile.

“Not that you were ever humble.”

“Or patient.”

“Or patient,” Taras agreed. “Still, I am sorry for her. She acted without authority when she met you last night. Believe it or not, I am glad she overestimated herself.”

Yelena glanced out the clean, clear window pane and out to the distance, toward where the sun glanced off the sea.

A short moment passed. It was tempting to let her pain and her irritation take control of her tongue, but as satisfying as that might have been, she couldn’t risk slipping up. And she wouldn’t give Taras the satisfaction of helping him humiliate Yelena for her misstep. Instead, she kept it to the point. “Whose authority?”

“Red Room, of course. Who else has there ever been?”

“There is no more Red Room.” Natasha’s voice sounded even. Calm. Sounded like hearing him confirm her worst suspicion didn’t turn something in her chest and in the pit of her stomach to water in a moment where she most needed it to be hard.

“There was no Red Room.” He glanced around them casually. Looking over his shoulder. Then he crossed his arms on the table in front of him, shoulders and back hunching in a way that implied confidentiality.

“Do you remember the end?” he asked. He didn’t wait for her to answer. “It was chaos. Before and after the USSR fell. Men who had been loyal to the party since Stalin ran off with resources, assets. Many of them lost for good. Russia was in many ways gutted when the time came to rebuild. Many of the same people were in power, but the trust was gone.”

“Is trust what we’re calling it?”

Taras’s coffee cup clicked down with more than deliberate force, punctuating Natasha’s question. His jaw tightened. That slight smile again, behind his mustache and creasing his cheeks.

He sighed. “We lost so much, and we didn’t know how much much we might lose before it was done. There was no knowing if our division would even exist one week to the next. So we did the only thing we could. We took everything we knew, the whole wealth of our research, of our intelligence gathering, and we put it somewhere it would be safe. Everything that was left at least.”

Natasha sat very still. Yelena’s eyes were fixed on her with a dangerous intensity. Any weakness, any slip in Natasha’s cool demeanor, would not be missed.

“The only safe place we had left.” Each word as resolute as stone.

“You’re lying.”

“You know I am not,” he said. And Taras wasn’t done. He was a showman. He always had been, in his own reserved way. He’d been better at that than the Madame. He could roll you into his vision for Russia and the future, and make you believe in it too, at least as long as he spoke with such conviction. “And look at the world now. Hydra is in ruins—as they deserve, Nazis. SHIELD isn’t what it once was. And the Avengers…?”

He said the last with a particular relish.

And there was a light in his eyes as he continued. “But it’s not just that. Really think about it. Things we only dreamed of in the Cold War, technology and strategies that were purely theoretical, or that we could only implement in the most rudimentary ways, are suddenly ripe. In this world, imagine what Red Room could be.”

“I’m not sure we’re imagining the same thing.” The problem was, she was pretty sure they were. She didn’t move, but it was a fight against gravity not to sink into the bench beneath her. “The current administration, do they know your ambitions? Or are we all going to be communist again?”

“This is about identity, not ideology. And the people in power now wouldn’t dare admit we didn’t have their blessing all along, not after our plan is in action.” Taras straightened his back, his shoulders, at once lifting the impression that he was stooped over her and making himself appear bigger, more imposing. “There could be a place in this new Red Room for you. Stop pretending to be something you’re not.

“The whole world saw how that turned out.”

A master showman. And a master manipulator. The worst part was, even knowing exactly what he was doing his words touched a nerve in her. After everything that had gone so spectacularly wrong in Germany, with the Avengers, there was a temptation to slink back into what she knew. She imagined this was what it felt like when people ached to go home, when grown adults wished uselessly for their parents.

Luckily she knew how to ignore those impulses. How to recognize them as weakness. Taras had taught her that.

A second too late, she exhaled through her nose, smiling wryly herself. “And if I say no?”

She’d asked almost the same question of General Ross not all that long ago.

“You break an old man’s heart,” Taras said. “But I am good to my word with you, Natalia. I told the boy no harm would come to you here. You may leave. I won’t try to stop you. Consider how much that information is worth to you, though. We will get it one way or another. I’d much rather it be willing.”

“I wouldn’t.” Yelena added, eyes hungry.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t.” Replying to Yelena first. That was the easier answer. As to the rest, she knew the answer but she had to be smart. She didn’t need that long to figure out what was on the device; she might know the gist of it, but if she knew specifically that would give her a lot better idea what her next move was.

“Can I get some time to think about it? It’s been almost thirty hours since I slept and… this is the kind of decision I’d like to save for after a nap.” It was a play for time, and a bald faced one. It was also true. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” Taras echoed the word, like tasting it, then again with more force. “Tomorrow. You always were a pragmatic student. I’m sure you’ll see things more clearly once you’ve rested, see where your best interests lie.”

He leaned in then, not as far as before but enough to remind her of his earlier posture. “And Natalia. Don’t try to play with me. You don’t want to find out what happens when Yelena isn’t acting alone.”

Natasha met his gaze steadily. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind she didn’t. At least she had until the next morning to figure out how she was going to handle what was going to happen when she pulled the whole thing down on her head.

  
  
  


Yelena watched Natasha Romanoff,  _ the _ Black Widow, walk away. She didn’t want to admit respect for the older woman, but if there was one thing she could acknowledge it was that Natasha knew how to hide her pain. If Yelena hadn’t known what to look for, she might have thought Natasha simply wasn’t feeling well.

“With all due respect, Taras,” she said when Natasha was out of sight. “Why didn’t you let me finish her off. She wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“Yelena,” he said her name like a gentle reprimand. “I gave my word.”

“She’s playing for time.”

“She is. It’s what I taught her to do. Stall until she can find an opening. It’s what I taught you to do, too.” He throws a few coins down on the table top,  _ pourboire _ . “Let her have it, for all the good it will do her.”

“You’re soft on her.” A mild accusation. Yelena stood, smoothing her jacket over her thighs.

And a dismissive wave of one hand. “Perhaps. Natasha could be a valuable asset, and we could use someone with her skills.”

The needle didn’t go unnoticed. They were too common and too intentional for Yelena to ignore, or to imagine it wasn’t meant to goad her. “Whatever you say.”

“Whatever I say. Remember that.” He turned two boothes behind them, where a young Arab woman staring intently at the screen of her laptop. At first glance, the machine looked old, the chassis weathered and covered with stickers, most starting to peel. A closer look at the screen and keyboard reveal something else, though, sleek and new in a way that belied its exterior. “Do we have the package?”

The woman took a sip of her coffee before flashing him a thumbs up.

“Good. Then we have a plane to catch. Let’s not dawdle. I have the feeling Natasha is going to be very cross with us very soon.” 

Yelena regretted she wouldn’t be there to see it.

  
  
  


Aziz stood waiting for her when Natasha got back to the hotel, dossier clutched to his chest. She traded him a couple more folded bills for it, tucking against her side. “No one there?” 

He shook his head.

Relief was too strong a word, but Natasha nodded. She wanted to ask if he was sure, if he might have been seen, but that wouldn’t get her anywhere. Instead she offered him a tired smile, as honest as she could manage. “Thanks. Take your brother out. Get some lunch.”

No time to stick around and see if he listened. Natasha locked the door behind her as she hid herself away in her hotel room, shadowy brown after the broad daylight, and tossed the dossier on the bed. Then she was back at her computer, bringing it back to life, finding the device’s signal again. The progress bar flashed as it sprang up, picking up where it left off:  43%

Almost halfway finished. Not enough that she would be able to see what was stored on it. Not in any detail. The way information was stored and transferred, trying to make sense of it would be like trying to make sense of forty-three percent of hundreds different jigsaw puzzles, all jumbled together. 

That didn’t make it impossible to tease something useful off it.

Natasha surrendered to some level of basic need and pried open the tiny minibar. She was running on fumes. Sleep wasn’t an option whatever she said. Even if she didn’t have better uses for her time. She could have the CIA or SHIELD or who knew who else knocking on her door any time. But a chocolate bar and a coke? She opened a bottle and took a long drink.

When she sat back down, she could pretend she was refreshed.

So actual content was a nonstarter, but other information, something like file names… that she might be able to recover. And at least then she could have an idea of the general scope of what she was dealing with.

Even if it had been cutting edge once, the encryption on the device was twenty five years old. They’d come a long way since then. What’s more, Natasha knew what this security looked like from the backend. She hadn’t helped develop it, but she’d used it enough, she was familiar with the work Red Room was putting out at the time. Yeah, she had an idea or two.

A little playing started a second program working in the corner. Shouldn’t slow down the overall performance too much.

She paused as she watched it work, running through code. Pulling her eyes away from the screen, Natasha broke off two squares of a chocolate bar and pushed them into her mouth without much appetite. It was cloying, not what she needed right now but she was hungry enough that she ignored that in favor of boosting her blood sugar.

Focus.

The second program opened a new window, showing a list of file names. Project code names.  C4H001 ,  KOSCHEI ,  0080814YA ,  PINOCH64 and so on. A few of them she knew.  BOLSHOI was a transparent name for the Black Widow’s cover program.  FREEZERBURN , a morbid joke on the Winter Soldier. Natasha pressed her lips together, wetting them.

Red Room’s wealth of information, Taras had said. Natasha could guess what that meant but only broadly speaking. Conditioning methods, parameters and triggers. Training. Strategies. Cybernetic and chemical enhancements. The names of operatives and contacts. Red Room had been just one arm of a much larger operation, and there was no way of saying just how much of the total information available at the time Taras and his accomplices might have been able to gather, but even a conservative estimate could have staggering implications.

She couldn’t tell yet if it was enough for Taras to do what he claimed, but she couldn’t rule out the possibility.

The cursor stuttered across the screen as she flicked her finger across the computer’s touchpad. Again, Natasha dragged her finger across it. The cursor jumped a centimeter to the right, then stopped.

Suddenly the sound of the hard drive sped to a whine, then a groan, and the fan whirred higher.

“Shi—” She stood up all at once, fingers still on the keyboard flying through commands. No response. The screen blinked, frozen. Natasha’s vision narrowed to just that, just the computer in front of her at the end of a hazy red tunnel while her pulse pounded in her ears. She could barely hear the sounds the computer made as it ramped higher over it. Jagged sounds. She tried to force it to power down. Still no response.

Smoke, and the screen went black.

As quick as that.

Natasha’s blood washed through her veins, heat and horror spreading through her face and her chest. Her head spun. For a moment, half a moment, she couldn’t think to process what happened. Her mind was a black, empty space behind her eyes. Her stomach turned. The skin along her spine crawled, short hairs standing on end as though the atmosphere had become electric. Her fingers tingled, hands cold.

Then it hit her. Like a physical blow. Like catching her toe on a tripline, and the grim knowledge that she might already be dead.

And it all spilled over at once. With one long swipe, she cleared the table. Laptops hit the floor, bounced, cracked. The bottle of coke swung wide, spewing foam and fluid across the floor. The small television on the chest of drawers followed it, pulled down down. Her chair, kicked over. Her ears rang as she stood shaking over the mess.

Blood seeped from her wound and through her shirt.


	5. Chapter Five

WAKANDA, 10h01

The capital was beautiful. Colorful and rich, with towering buildings like nothing she’d seen anywhere else in the world. The architecture had its own shape and identity that went deeper than the mixed façades. A different approach to building and technology went into the bones of the buildings and infrastructure. That part, Natasha more or less expected. What surprised her was the way Wakandans brought nature into their city. Massive tiered gardens stood like ziggurats, terraces overflowing with plantlife.Vines climbed woodwork and door frames. Broad green leafed breaks screened away parks and areas for outdoor dining. On both the grand and the personal scale, the Wakandan capital was a living city.

She wished she was in a state to be as impressed by it as it deserved.

T’Challa led her by a route that skirted clear of most of it. The view was striking, from a distance. Natasha caught just enough detail to form an idea how much more she missed.

Most of the trip passed in silence. Not the comfortable kind. T’Challa moved easily, his attention turned inward. Natasha was tense. Tenser than she should have allowed herself to be. It wasn’t in the set of her shoulders or the angle of her brows, but her mind kept playing over conversations they weren’t having and probably wouldn’t. Wasted energy when she should have been thinking of her next moves. This kind of thing, it was chasing shadows.

It was recognizing that in herself, that struggle, that pushed Natasha to take a deep breath and check her perspective.

“I notice you haven’t asked what happened to me?” she said as they neared the medical plaza.

“Perceptive as always, Ms. Romanoff.”

Natasha inclined her head by an increment. T’Challa raised his hand gesturing to Ayo to make a little space and drifted closer, putting her just outside of arm’s length.

His bodyguard cast a flat look, but she moved subtly, letting the distance between Natasha and T’Challa narrow. Couldn’t be easy having her job and allowing a known assassin this close to her king. Natasha winced.

“I do not think you are a woman to play for sympathy. Or for attention. To me, you seem like the kind of person who would as soon be invisible as be seen in pain.”

“Perceptive,” Natasha echoed him.

A short, wordless hum of acknowledgement, then: “Will you tell me what happened?”

“I would. If you made me, made it a condition for getting what I want.” Transactional. Red Room had taught her that, how to use her vulnerability as a bargaining chip.They also taught her how to avoid giving a straight answer.

There were men who would hear her say that and take it for a yes, for an invitation to press.

T’Challa was not one of them.

Inside, the medical facilities were sleek modern lines. Clean, without the oppressive air of sterility that tended to suffocate hospitals. They drew a few looks from doctors and nurses, all dressed in smooth white.

“In that case, Ms. Romanoff, I have one more question. One I will not make you answer, but I would like to know.”

Natasha watched him sideways, as though trying to look at him around the bridge of her nose; a  nod

“Does Captain Rogers know about any of this?” he asked. “Your mission here, your past with Barnes, whoever it is you really are… does he know?

The impulse to give a glib answer turned sour in her mouth. Despite the warm morning, Natasha felt cold, clammy. 

She didn’t have a response for that. Not an easy one. The impulse to honesty wasn’t one she trusted, and the longer some things lay buried, the harder it became to scrape off the time and dust to exhume them. 

A lie would have come quickly. The truth made her false start

“No,” she said finally. So much work for the one little word. The others came a little easier, but there was no opened floodgate. She picked out each that followed carefully, like artifacts. “I thought about it. He would’ve come, if I called him. But I didn’t reach out.”

A pause, but that wasn’t the end.

“This isn’t his fight, and it’s not what he was trained to do. Bringing Barnes into the mix would have complicated things.” Steve wasn’t always reliable when Bucky was in play. “But it recently became very clear to me I’m not going to be able to do this on my own.”

“And Barnes? He gets something out of this.”

“He might. There’s a chance the people I’m after have intel on his conditioning, and on his arm. With that, it’d be one step closer to getting whatever they put in his head out.” And a chance to face the people who put it in there in the first place. She had to hope it was enough to get him back in play.

“Ms. Romanoff,” T’Challa’s voice was serious, matter of fact. “We will heal him without that. Looking at this, do you doubt we have the technology?”

He surprised her then by softening. It was subtle, but a side of him she didn’t see in Germany, or that maybe she only saw the hint of before his father died. The T’Challa who thought two people could accomplish more than twenty. “You could ask if we could heal you as well.”

Natasha snorted, a tired half smile the most sincere expression she had worn all day. “You don’t owe me anything, Your Majesty.”

“And he does?”

They came to stop before a cryo chamber, smaller and less monstrous than the apparatuses they used back in the USSR, but for a moment seeing his face behind the frosted glass, Natasha was somewhere else. Somewhere dark and windowless, with sodium yellow lights flooding a bare, institutional space. Her throat tightens. She expected it, but for the barest instant her own reaction takes her by surprise.

Then it passes, and she’s back in Wakanda.

“Maybe it’s something we owe each other.”

  
  
  


Natasha was there when Barnes woke up. It wasn’t pretty. First they thawed him out. That part wasn’t so bad. He slept through it, cold and unresponsive. Cleaned him up. Got him on monitors—no need for electrodes, the sensors seemed to be built into the bed itself. They monitored him while his vitals came out of hibernation and stabilized. 

Then they gave him something to jump start him.

Barnes jerked, arched, reached for the arm that wasn’t there. His fingers curled against the metal stump of his prosthesis. Clawed at the sheath hiding the stump. Blindly, he swung his head toward one of the attendants. The motion nearly toppled him to the floor.

No one tried to restrain him. Smart.

He didn’t see her at first. Probably he didn’t see anything, not that made sense. Confusion clouded his expression. There was pain there too, at the corners of his eyes and the way his lips skinned back from his teeth. His hair fell stringy in his face when he tried to sit up. His balance wasn’t there yet, and he dropped back to the bed. The monitor for his heartbeat telegraphed his panic like morse code. 

Only when he started to focus, to assess his surroundings, did he actually see her. The fight went out of him and he panted three full breaths while he processed. Inhale, exhale. His shoulders slipped down. Inhale, his expression lost some of its rictus. Exhale, his brows drew together in confusion.

Inhale: “Natalia?”

“Take a minute,” Natasha told him, just a little too quick and too flat, almost before the name was out. She sucked her lower lip, modified her tone. “We don’t have to talk about this now..

Barnes frowned, then grimaced. When he looked up again, his face was clearer. His eyes softened, his focus more inward.

“What happened? Steve…?”

“Steve’s fine.” Natasha put that fear away immediately, saw something like relief in his features when she did.

“Then what?”

The monitors silenced as he pushed himself up with his good arm. Natasha cast a glance at a nurse, then the door. The woman got the hint and she and the other attendant retreated. The sound of their footfalls was soft, as though the floor was engineered to dampen the sound. A last glance back, and they were gone, leaving Barnes and Natasha alone.

Still Natasha didn’t speak immediately. Instead, she leaned back in her chair. Pulling up her shirt, she showed him the clean gauze pad taped down inside her hip.

Opposite side from the scar he’d given her.

Barnes expression clouded like a Black Sea sky expecting rain. A shadow fell across his features, a sense of weight. The color seemed to leave his eyes.

“Day before last, I ran into a Russian operative.” She watched him as, slowly, she unpacked and contextualized her experiences of the past two days. “She caught me trying to avoid a SHIELD crew which I now believe she tipped off to my presence in North Africa. She knew my methods. She knew my hardware. She knew my moves.”

Natasha sketched out the events that followed: how the girl, Yelena, had opened her up looking for a Soviet made data storage device which had been hidden in Natasha’s own body; how she got away because she made an educated guess where the girl keep her flashbang; how Taras Romanoff had re-emerged after twenty-five years off the grid to confirm she’d been carrying around a payload of old Leviathan secrets; how he’d corrupted the data storage device and destroyed the computer she was working on, along with the partial files she’d recovered. A whole laundry list of failures.

He didn’t interrupt. As Natasha spoke, Barnes settled heavily into his body. Forward hunch. Hair falling in his face.

“Yelena put a considerable effort into the trap she set for me,” Natasha said, winding toward her conclusion. “Considering that, it’s safe to say they were able to grab whatever information they were after before they uploaded the virus. They’re going to put Red Room back into production.”

“Production.” He grimaced, a sort of pained half smile.

“Weapons. Spies. Soldiers. Who knows what else.”

“And you think we can do something about it.” Not a question.

Natasha shrugged. “Who else is going to? I’m burned with SHIELD and the Avengers. Steve’s got his own mission. Who else does that leave?”

“That doesn’t make me sound like your first choice.” A huff, and he rubbed his shoulder. “Not that I blame you.”

“You were the only choice.”

Sitting there, still and solemn, he looked like Natasha felt: old. Older than his face, and tired. Natasha pressed on, the words coming more slowly as she added, “I don’t need your arm. I need someone to watch my back. Someone who knows the game.

His head bobbed acknowledgment. Fingers curled and uncurled slightly. His throat moved as he swallowed.

“Someone to keep me straight.”

Barnes’ sigh hung in the air between them.

“All right,” he said. “What’s the plan.”

“First thing is getting to Cairo. We have a flight booked from there to Moscow this evening.”

“From there?”

Well. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  
  
  


Moscow swallowed them up, cool grey and humid. The morning sun hid behind a patchy haze, some places thick and fluffy and others high and almost white, but never blue. Natasha didn’t look out of place on the busy sidewalk. Even Barnes, standing like a shadow beside her with his left sleeve pinned up, didn’t attract attention.

“So now what?” Barnes settled his duffle bag on his good shoulder. He didn’t look at her as he asked it, instead watching the wind scratch a couple of empty wrappers across the pavement. It was the first thing he’d said to her since they got off the plane, almost three hours before.

The flight hadn’t been chatty either. 

Natasha had booked them two tickets, greased some palms, made some threats and worked some magic to get Barnes through security, but they weren’t exactly traveling first class. The plane was an older model that had almost certainly started life with a higher end airline before being sold off, refurbished and repainted by new owners who didn’t care so much how many miles she had on her. Wasn’t that it was shabby, but it had seen better days—and it was a far cry from the quinjet. They didn’t have the privacy to discuss their situation or strategize. Instead they travelled in silence, Barnes in the window seat and Natasha in the middle between him and their neighbor through the seven hour flight. 

“You should try to sleep,” Barnes had told her sometime after they’d watched the sun set behind the clouds. His voice was low, pitched not to carry. His inflight dinner sat half-eaten on the tray in front of him.

“You going to?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Got plenty already. But you should.”

And he wasn’t wrong about that. She should sleep. It’d be the best use of he time at this point, give her the chance to recover, to start to heal. As long as they were in the air, there wasn’t much else she could do.

“Guess I’m just restless,” Natasha said. Then she added, “Not in a hurry to go home.”

It came out flat, awkward. Barnes didn’t find it funny. Neither did she.

Natasha turned to her neighbor, bracing herself on the seat in front of her as she made to stand. “Excuse me. Need to stretch my legs.”

The business woman on the aisle seat blinked and mumbled a soft acknowledgement. A rustle and shuffle as she tucked her feet out of the way. A quick, insincere smile, then she returned to her novel and Natasha retreated to the restroom. When she came back, Barnes’ dinner had been cleared away.

It wasn’t their only exchange during the course of their trip. There were a handful of others, all on the same pattern. A few brief words, then the conversation failed. Mostly that was on Natasha; Barnes didn’t push.

“Romanova?”

One foot swiveled toward him, opening her posture. Her face turned toward him, but she was careful of how she twisted her torso.

“Natasha.” That wasn’t a question.

She inclined her head, looking at him over her sunglasses. “We need intel,” she said finally. “I know our enemy, but I don’t know where he is or how to hit him, so I find out who does, and see if they want to talk.”

“And if they don’t want to talk?”

“That’s what you’re here for. Stand behind me and look grumpy. They’ll crack in no time.” Her lips twitched, implying a smile before she let her expression relax into something more stoic. “You might be down an arm, but we still have your reputation.” His reputation and hers.

“You think that’ll work?” Barnes asked. He shifted his bag again. “Start shaking down ex-KGB agents until something comes loose.”

“You have a better idea?”

He didn’t answer, which was its own kind of answer. Instead, he frowned and leaned back on his heels. The expression was more in his eyes than his mouth, a kind of squint.  “I want to drive.”

“Sorry, Barnes. It’s a stick.”


	6. Chapter Six

“She has the Soldier.”

In most respects, the director’s office looked like it had not been updated since nineteen eighty-four. Only the computer sitting in a sleep mode to one side made any concessions to the advance of time or technology, standing out in its modern black slim profile design. It was out of place beside the green glass banker’s lamp and the ancient taupe filing cabinets, in this room with its nicotine yellow walls and stark concrete floor. Yelena stood at attention in the doorway.

Taras Romanov swiveled and reclined in his desk chair. His hands folded across his lap with a deceptively benign air of interest. “The Winter Soldier,” he mused. “Is she controlling him?”

“Based on security footage, his presence is voluntary.”

Taras rocked, his lower lip jutting out under his mustache. “There are many ways to control a man, Yelena.” He huffed and then waved away his own answer like an unpleasant odor. “What else?”

“They’ve been tracking down old agents. Most of them inactive or retired. Romanova’s information is out of date.” Yelena crossed her arms in front of her, lip curled. “So far, no one who knows about our current plans. We’ve confirmed that they’ve seen Koychev and Vasilevsky. Probably Ivanov too.”

“And they cooperated?”

“As much as they could when they don’t know anything.” And that was the problem. Yelena’s jaw tightened, the muscles in her cheeks aching as she held back the words that wanted to rush out. Instead she bit them off one by one. “Eventually they’re going to find someone who can put them on the right trail. They’ll find the Headmistress, and she has very little reason not to trade our location to extend her own miserable retirement.”

“Lyudmila is out of the game,” was his first dismissive response. He steepled his fingers in front of him, looking at their hard tips rather than at Yelena. His mien thoughtful, Taras leaned back in his chair. “Imagine if they did come to us—not now, obviously. We’re not ready yet. But in good time.”

“You mean if you flipped them.” She didn’t entirely hide the disdain in her tone, the same disdain Yelena felt at the ancient turn-key locks and the dated decor. 

Taras’s gaze snapped up to her face then, stony. His rocking and swiveling stilled.

“My apologies, director.”

For two beats, silence held. Yelena didn’t move, not even to blink. Her hands sweated by her sides 

Then his chair creaked as Taras reclined again, one finger tapping its partner. “No need, my dear, no need.” He made a sound in his throat, gravel and phlegm. “If I did flip them, it would be a great victory. Feather in our cap. Two of Leviathan’s greatest assets brought back into the fold. The symbolism, you understand…”

There were other arguments to be made about the optics. Picture the message sent by destroying two of the most high profile agents to ever escape Red Room’s control. But there was no way to tell Taras that now, not with all due respect.

“Still, we need more time. If they find a trail of breadcrumbs now, they’ll arrive early.”

Yelena’s attention sharpened at that. Whether or not she agreed with his direction, she recognized orders to follow.

“Stop them. Make sure they don’t go to Lyudmila. She may not know where we are, but her information is more current than the Widow’s.” 

“Permission to use deadly force?” Yelena would not risk that again without confirmation. If it had worked in Tunisia, then she would have been able to plead forgiveness in light of a success. That wasn’t a privilege she could count on now.

“Well, my dear…” Taras drew out the words. His mouth pulled down briefly and he shrugged. “If you can kill them, then they are no longer the weapons they once were. No need to hold back for an old man’s daydreams.”

  
  
  


Natasha kept her hands in the pockets of her black motorcycle jacket. Bucky got the door. Tenement building: once respectable, now dingy. Not fallen into disrepair, but wearing its age, showing signs that the current landlord didn’t have the same care or commitment as the original designer. Most of those who’d lived here in the building’s heyday would have moved on by now, one way or another. Stairs creaked softly under their boots. The kind of small sound that only emphasized the silence. Yellowed stains marked the walls.

The smell of cigarette smoke clung to everything.

By now, the two of them had established a pattern. This was the sixth time they’d done this. Five times before they’d gone through the moves, found their balance and their rhythm. Barnes played the muscle. Stood behind her. Stayed quiet. Let his face and his size and his reputation do the work. Natasha was the voice—the one running the show, asking the questions. There was no good cop, bad cop between the two of them. No one would have believed Natasha if she talked sweet. The Black Widow and the Winter Soldier aroused too much distrust to play innocent. Instead, they relied on another kind of misdirection. 

On the fourth floor, at the two o’clock from the stairwell, second door on the left as they turned down the hall, it was Barnes who knocked. Still in her dark glasses, Natasha put herself where she could be seen from the peephole.

Shuffling behind the door, the sound of slippered feet indicated exactly where he stood. The occupant grumbled to himself, words unintelligible but the tone clear. Could be an act if he was expecting them. He sounded genuinely surprised and put out. She could tell the moment he saw her; he stumbled as jumped back.

Barnes cut her a glance, lifting his chin slightly. One brow kicked up just a little in a question: want me to open it for you?

One short shake of her head, no. Not yet.

“Sterelny?” she said, naming him. At least the name he’d been using the last time she saw him. He had a new one these days. “Alexi.”

A shuffle behind the door. A pause. Natasha almost heard the old man slump. The door creaked open.

“Natalia.”

Alexi Petrovitch Sterelny stood framed in the narrow gap between door and frame, face gaunt and sagging, eyes puffy, loose lips almost purple against his ashy complexion. The fear in his expression didn’t come as a surprise. The way he held himself, protective, as though he expected her pull a gun on him. Or worse. What surprised her was how his eyes gleamed. The many lines of his face animated with disbelief and delight. “Natalia, I never thought I’d see you again. Look at you. You’ve hardly aged a day…”

His smile softened. Like a proud father, but it wasn’t affection there. Then it fell, fear collapsing in on whatever fond feelings it was she inspired in him.

He swallowed. “You’re remembering?” 

“Some,” Natasha said . She took off her sunglasses to look at him. The light wasn’t kind. “Can we come in?”

Sterelny didn’t answer immediately. There was another pause there. One familiar to Natasha, to anyone in their line of work, with their experience. Her request wasn’t a request. His choice right now, his only real one, was whether or not he complied with them willingly or whether he could deny involvement without lying. It was a well known calculus. His eyes darted, adding up the numbers, figuring his chances.

His mouth started to work, stopped, before finally his answer: “Better than in the hall.”

Nod. Hands in her pockets. Barnes took his cue, pushing away from the wall to enter first. He gave the flat a quick once over—check the kitchen, disappear down the hall, back again with a little gesture. Natasha followed him then, closing the door behind her.

Sterelny lingered a moment beside her before he fell back. He smelled strongly of aftershave, something spicy on the primary note but oily and masculine underneath. The whole place was stale cigarettes.

The smell stirred something. Recognition. A sick uneasiness in the pit of Natasha’s gut.

“I know you.” Clipped.

Sterelny flapped his hands. Backing out of her space, his expressive face confirmed her words before he ever said anything. “You were one of the best operatives I ever worked with. Dedicated. Devoted… You never hesitated. Even when everything was coming down around our ears.”

  
  
  


_ Rushing down a hall, Taras at her side, the Madame behind him. _

_ Sterelny. The same animated face, younger but not young, twisted up into a mask of anxiety. He waits for them in a lab room, a place that at a glance might pass for a dentist office or an opthamologist, but the sight of it makes her go cold. _

_ A chair faces a monitor, the screen flashing static. “Hurry. There’s no time.” Sterelny says. His voice is tight. “I don’t even know if this program will hold.” _

_ “It will have to.” Taras says. Turns to Natasha. Asks, “Are you ready.” _

_ She feels sick. _

_ “Do it. _ ”

  
  
  


“...Honestly,” Sterelny said, rubbing his hands together. His skin was audibly dry and soft, like old paper. “Honestly, I’m amazed it lasted so long. When did you remember? What do you know?”

Physical signs of anger: rapid heart rate; lightheadedness; nausea; sweaty palms; prickling at the back of the neck, down the spine; clenched jaw. Natasha didn’t feel an emotion, she felt a constellation of symptoms, signs she could recognize, categorize, diagnose.

She shifted her jaw deliberately, forcing it to relax. “We ask the questions.”

Barnes shouldered his way between the two of them. Sterelny fell back another step, blinking at both of them in owlish confusion.

“You were the one,” Natasha said. “After they put that thing in me, you were the one you repressed the memory, replaced it with the graduation.”

Barnes glanced back, brows drawn together. 

Off script. 

“Yes,” Sterelny confirmed. His face fell, but Natasha doubted he understood the weight of what she was saying, what she was accusing him of. She’d had her head played with. After Loki, Clint had asked Natasha if she knew what it was like to be unmade. And here he stood, one of the men who’d put something in her head that wasn’t her. Somehow, he handled the situation with all the gravity of a retired science teacher. “That was the last time I worked with you,” he said. “Is that all you remember?”

“The lady said we ask the questions.” Barnes understood. Understood better than almost anyone. “The people trying to revive Red Room. Where are they?” 

“I don’t know.” Sterelny ran his fingers through his hair. White flyaways stood in the light. “I haven’t had contact with anyone in ages.”

Two sets of eyes settled on him, unsympathetic. Barnes spoke first. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

“No,” Sterelny glanced at him, shaking his head. “There’s nothing better than that. How can I tell you what I don’t know?”

“You’ll come up with something.” Barnes, again. 

Natasha stared on. She should have asked something, offered something, led the conversation. She was the one trained for it. She should have drawn Sterelny out. Once he was talking about what he did know, divulging information, then she’d be able to tease out clues. Instead, she kept her mouth shut, distrusting what might come out if she opened it. Her revulsion, face to face with this man she hadn’t seen in decades, was physical in a way she hadn’t been prepared for. Like biting into rotten meat.

Her injury hurt, dull and throbbing, every angry pulse turning her stomach, pushing her disgust up into her throat.

And it showed on her face.

It was her face that Sterelny watched, not Barnes’ threatening glower. His cheeks hollowed out under her unblinking gaze, slack lips trembled.

“You don’t understand.” He brushed past Bucky’s question. “You’re remembering, but you don’t understand.”

“So help me understand.” Natasha spoke through her teeth. Words almost a hiss. Her hands balled into fists in her coat. “Tell me what happened.”

“You think you were a victim. You think—we never would have hurt you, Natalia.” He must have seen the disbelief in her eyes, the sharp comment in the way her lips skinned back, because he stepped closer. Impressive considering Barnes stood between them. Sterelny leaned around the Winter Soldier’s missing arm, growing more insistent. “We only wanted what was best for you. You were a hero, Natalia, the greatest we could make for Russia.

“We faced so much. Bureaucracy, budget cuts, pressure to keep up with the Americans, corruption inside and out, but we developed the best weapons we could. In Leviathan, we knew that the right agent in the right place at the right time could be worth more than a nuclear bomb.

“You were one of our best, Natalia. Both of you...” His  speech slowed then, losing energy as quickly as he had found it. Standing there, almost touching Barnes, close enough she could have punched him, Sterelny had the gall to look hurt. He continued, but sullenly, defeated. “Better intelligence and better counterintelligence. Identify the right targets, sow unrest within our enemy’s house. That was our path to Russian preeminence. That’s what we taught you.”

“We don’t have time for nostalgia,” Natasha said grimly. “Tell us what you know about Taras’s plan. Then we’re leaving.”

“I know… I know he wants to revive it, Red Room, the old ways…”

“How do we find him?”

“I know someone,” he said. Pouted. “Who might know.—”

—A flash of light through the window. Brief. Coming from a dark upper floor unit across the way—

“Down!” Natasha shouted.

Cloud of plaster beside the window. Barnes dropped to the floor. Natasha fell back into the flat’s one narrow hall. Her fist balled up in the thick collar of Sterelny’s sweater as she yanked him down beside her. Natasha knew that couldn’t be the order of events, but her mind perceived it that way, as though she had time to see the bullet exit the wall and make the rational decision to save Sterelny and herself rather than acting on instinct when she saw the scope flash.

“Sloppy, Yelena,” she muttered. Sloppy of her too, not pulling the blinds as soon as they’d entered the room. She pushed Sterelny away. Touching him was oily. Slimy. Like he left a film on her hand. “In the bathroom. Stay low—and if you even think of trying to escape—”

She let the threat hang in the air. Another bullet crashed through the window, blowing out a hole in the glass. Shards fell to the floor.. Bucky rolled away from it, retreating into the kitchen. A third, tearing splinters out of the window casing. 

“We have to get out of here,” she called to Barnes. Not because he wouldn’t know, but the conversation had to start somewhere.

“Was thinking of calling a cab,” he said, a wry grumble.

“Not a bad idea if we can get out of the building.”

The fourth shot shattered a mug left out on the table, spilling tea across the arm of an ratted old wingback chair. The book of poetry beside it: soaked. Probably ruined.

“You have an idea?”

Natasha glanced over her shoulder where Sterelny cowered beside his bathtub. “Not yet, but I think one’s on the way.”

A fifth shot, putting a hole through the front door.

“Yeah?” Barnes said. Then a huff. “Yeah, I hear you. Ready?”

She pulled her Glock from its shoulder holster, checked the clip, snapped it back to good. “Always.”

One deep breath, then another, ready but not tense. In some ways, this was easier than questioning the doctor. She didn’t even notice her injury.

For an instant, the room was quiet enough to hear the ringing in her own ears, a siren outside, Sterelny’s labored breathing in the bathroom. Natasha and Barnes exchanged glances. Neither of them ventured into the line of fire.

Then the front door slammed open. Four men in black tracksuits pushed in, dressed like criminals, tattoos climbing their necks and across their knuckles, but they held themselves like military. Moved together. Swinging their heads in unison. Covering each other’s backs. They looked competent.

Yelena should have sent more of them.

Natasha reached for the first one, red hair with sideburns, and yanked him toward her, punching him in the gut before she drove her shoulder into his chest—putting him between her and the windows as she moved out of the hall. The same move opened her up to kick Sideburns’ closest buddy Skinhead low, taking him in the knee. Knee buckled. Skinhead blurted a sharp curse.

In the kitchen, Barnes backed into a corner, body angled to keep a narrow profile as the rest of the muscle boxed him in, had him on the defensive. Down an arm. The disadvantage was enough that he didn’t end the fight immediately—bullet hit the refrigerator, rocking the freezer door open. Close enough to one of the goons, Lip Scar, to set him back on his heels, hands in the air, lips skinned away from his teeth.

The last of Yelena’s men, Neck Tattoo, advanced undeterred by her indiscriminate attack. From his position wedged behind the refrigerator, Barnes slammed the slightly-ajar freezer door wide open right at Neck Tattoos face. First attack. Second attack: grab tea kettle from its place on the stove and swing it around with the full strength of his good right arm. The kettle struck Neck Tattoo’s jaw with a thunk, metal hitting meat. Neck Tattoo reeled back, stumbled down to one knee and spit blood.

Barnes second attack flowed into his third. Kettle still in hand as Lip Scar pressed in again—a small framed print exploded, the picture of ballerina falling to the floor—Barnes flung the tea kettle at his head. Lip Scar raised his arms to deflect the kettle and Barnes stepped in with a vicious front kick.

Lip Scar staggered back, right into the line of fire, Yelena’s next bullet going through his chest and into the wall behind him.

“You picked the wrong side.” Spit the words. Bitter. Natasha knew that side. Knew just how much it valued its agents. Thugs like this, hired muscle, they were replaceable. Skinhead snarled in response while Sideburns regrouped.

Time to pick: Natasha shot, took out Sideburns just as Skinhead lunged. Got inside her range. Grabbed for her wrist.

“Sterelny, now. Get out, now.” Twist. Keep him between her and the window. A bullet broke the air just above Sideburns’ shoulder, beside her head, and put a second hole in the front door. The doctor moved with the quick motions and hesitation of a rodent, an old grizzled mouse in a fisherman’s sweater as he scrambled to the door, Natasha doing what she could to keep Sideburns and her own body between him and Yelena’s shot.

Barnes appeared beside her, holding Neck Tattoo by the throat in a deadly grip as he backed  toward the door himself.

“Ready?”

“On my signal.”

She didn’t look to see if he agreed. A shot grazed Neck Tattoo’s upper arm, darkening the sleeve of his track jacket.

“Now!”

Natasha dropped her human shield and dropped to the ground. Not her finest roll as she kicked off, the muscles in her core weak even as adrenaline and endorphins kept the pain at bay. No time to waste checking her staples now. Hastily, she climbed back to her feet, casting a look to find Sterelny. If he tried to get away—

But he was there, taking her arm in spotted hands and pulling her out of the way, his eyes wild behind his glasses.

Natasha recoiled, the oily feeling from before stronger. Almost strong enough to turn her stomach. A second of eye contact. Less. Half a second.

Then Barnes put his arm around Sterelny’s shoulders, herding him toward the stairs. “How long do you think we have before more of her men show up?”

“Can’t say. I don’t know how many of them she has.” Enough to spare, she knows that much. “We have to assume not long.”

“Alternate escape route?”

“Working on it.”

Sterelny let Barnes steer. Stumbled along numbly. There was no color in his face and no time to coddle his shock.

“Well?”

“Got it. Follow me.” Decisive. She took the stairs in a rush, jumping the banister when they neared the landing. Bucky followed with Sterelny. There were no more goons to stop them. At least not yet.

Barnes followed as fast as Sterelny could safely be moved, holding the old man up even as his slippered feet slipped on the steps.

At the first floor, Natasha pulled them down the hall. The front door was out; no chance that wasn’t being watched. Side exits, not much better. The hall was empty, no doubt the sounds of rapid fire gunshots only a moment ago kept residents locked inside. Hadn’t there been sirens a moment ago? Police outside wasn’t much better than Red Room assassins.

Halfway down the east hall, Natasha stopped before a unit door and pulled her gun again, taking aim on the lock.

“Wait.” That was when Sterelny pulled free from Barnes and lurched toward her. This time he stopped short of touching her. His hands shook as her wrung them before him. “Wait. I know—I know who might know. Might, mind you. It’s not for sure, but…”

“Save it until we’re out of here,” Natasha said. The words were clipped. “Not the time.”

“No, it is the time.” He blew out his cheeks, eyes shining. “If I don’t tell you now…”

He didn’t have to finish that sentence. Natasha didn’t argue what went unsaid.

“The Headmistress.” The words dropped like ice, clear and brittle. “If anyone knows who isn’t a part of—of what’s happening now, it’s her. Even Romanov wouldn’t dare make a move on her. Not yet. She’s retired to the old compound outside of Moscow. You know where it is?”

A second of still silence. Time they didn’t have. 

“I know where it is.”

“Good.” His voice thinned, barely finishing the word. Another second passed. Natasha glanced from Sterelny to Bucky, a silent communication passing between the two of them. 

Natasha shot out the lock on the first floor flat’s door, then kicked it open. A woman screamed, then shouted questions. Natasha shouted back, one sharp command: “Quiet.”

Barnes added, “Go to your bathroom and lock yourself in. You’ll live through this.”

There was a sound then. The woman doing as she was told. Natasha didn’t even look. They’d wasted enough time already. She strode with purpose to the nearest windows and pried them open.

“You go first.” To Barnes. “Make sure he doesn’t break both his legs on the landing.”

“You want me to catch him?”

“You’ll figure it out. I trust you.”

He didn’t argue further. Maybe because he couldn’t. Maybe because it wasn’t worth it, not when time was ticking away and any minute either cops or hired guns were going to show up and either way, there wouldn’t be a lot of questions. Not for the two of them.  Natasha opened the window as far as it would go. Barnes climbed out, bracing himself with his hand briefly before swinging his legs out and dropping down to the pavement three meters below, hunching down beside a dumpster.

A quick moment, a glance around the dumpster and up the ally, then a wave. Coast clear.

“Now you,” Natasha told Sterelny.

“I can’t—” he protested. Anxious. Uncertain. It wasn’t just fear of dying, though there was that too. It was another kind of hesitance. Natasha grabbed his arm, physically pulling him to the window. His next words fell out, rushed. “If I break something jumping down there, I’ll slow you down. Already, I’m slowing you down.”

“So get moving. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” A pull and a shove, bent down and pushing him out the window.

He jumped down. Awkward and unpracticed; he hadn’t been trained for this, and he wasn’t physically prepared for it. Barnes was there to catch him, helped cushion him. It wasn’t that far to fall.

Natasha followed, landing lightly before Sterelny had even caught his balance.

She allowed herself a brief moment of optimism. They might just get out of this alive. Both alley entrances stood open. She pointed with her chin.

“That cab you mentioned?”

“Let’s grab it.” 

They moved as a unit together toward the nearest street, Sterelny in the middle, Natasha and Barnes flanking him. Natasha had his forearm in her hand, fingers locked in a vice-grip for all the touch still put up the hairs on the back of her neck. It seemed like she could nearly feel his pulse through the cording of his sweater, but that had to be in her head. A fantasy built out of her own blood pumping strong through her finger tips.

So it had to be a fantasy when the sniper shot came through the alley from clear on the other side of the building, and she felt his pulse jump and fade.

The blood that sprayed her cheek was real.

The way his body went slack and he fell, that was real too.

Barnes didn’t hesitate even fraction of a second. He took Natasha and pulled her close, pressed flat against the wall. Out of line of sight. They couldn’t stop moving.

Natasha winced. “Shit.”

“Natalia, are you—”

“No, it’s fine.” She touched her injury. Suddenly the pain in it was throbbing through all her resolve. She swallowed hard. “We got what we need.”

  
  
  


Project COLOSSUS: 56-60% complete.

The arm was a thing of beauty, laid out on the workstation with two engineers toiling away over it, rushing through the specs of the prototype before they committed to the next step. Wire guts encased in a system of synthetic muscle and titanium casing plates, it made the Winter Soldier’s arm look archaic, technology from a bygone time. Thirty years ago, they had wanted so badly to make this, and now, now science had caught up.

Taras looked on with pride, gratified that he had lived to see this when so many of his comrades had not.

“How long until it is ready to go into production?” he asked, his eyes on the prosthetic arm. It was massive, it’s proportions made more for a monster than a man, but what a monster. The engineers were an afterthought. He may well have been asking the arm itself its status.

“Close,” one of them said, crisp. The other looked up, eyes almost lost behind the glare of his glasses. “So far, we’ve had to make only minor adjustments. We’ll be ready on schedule.”

“It had better be.”

It. Not you. Not we. It—this was bigger than all of them.

“Sir.” the second engineer acknowledged. “ETA—”

A soft buzzing cut off the words. Taras held up his hand, forestalling any more words. “Tell me when it’s ready. I trust you, doctors.”

The color drained from the more talkative of the engineer’s face. The other still didn’t look up, busy testing a circuit.

“Yes, sir.”

Turning away, Taras put his phone to his ear. “Report.”

Yelena’s voice came through clearly, her voice full of youth and certainty. “Sterelny is dead.”

“An acceptable loss. Sterelny hasn’t been an asset of any worth in many, many years.” A pause then as he considered the other factors at play. The next question could nearly have gone without saying. “Black Widow and the Soldier?”

Black Widow, the one who still held the mantel over Yelena. If the younger girl had achieved Natalia’s defeat, she’d already be crowing about it.

“Still active. They were with Sterelny when he was eliminated.”

“Were they?” Taras turned, walking into the alcove by the lab’s door. His voice remained amiable as he scratched under his chin. “Did he give them anything?”

“He doesn’t know where we are—”

“That is not what I asked, Yelena.”

“I can’t say for sure what he gave them. It is possible he might have talked. Sterelny should be considered compromised—but they did not have much time. The extraction failed.”

“Extraction was never their objective. The Widow was there for information. Now you’re telling me she may have gotten it.”

“Sir, there’s no reason to believe she’s—”

Taras cut her off sharply. “Yes or no.”

“Correct.” What a sullen child.

“I see. For your sake, I hope they do not arrive before we’re ready to start production.” Taras’s tone was uncompromising, promising to be no more forgiving if her actions resulted in failure. “It will be on you if they do.”

“If they come, then they will face me.”

“It’s good you say that, Yelena. I have a gift for you.”

“Romanov?” So young, she could still be taken by surprise. “You’re too generous.”

“You will not fail again because you were not well prepared or equipped,” he reassured her. Taras would provide her with every reasonable resource. 

“If I will not fail you again.”

“You had best not,” he said, the warmth leaving his voice. “You will succeed next time, or do not bother surviving the fight.”

“Understood.”

He lowered the phone, thumbing it off as he put it in his pocket. There was nothing more to say.


	7. Chapter Seven

The cab dropped them off in front of a tiny hotel, tucked at an odd angle on the intersection of three streets. Natasha paid cash. Tail lights were fading before she and Barnes even made it to the door.

Barnes brought their bags.

Facade: nondescript. The sign flickered a little, blue lights falling across the street. Cheap, but not seedy. The kind of place airlines put people up when their flights were cancelled, or where middle management and salesmen stayed for work. Clean on the cheap.

The lobby was salmon pink, the wallpaper a pattern of peach and white roses in the wrong proportion for the small space, making it feel smaller than it was.

Deep breath. Smile. No need to pretend she wasn’t tired, as long as she hid the pain.

“Hello,” she said in English, leaning on the counter as she addressed the concierge. “I know it’s late, but the place we were staying was just too loud. There was a wedding. You still have a room open, right?”

The concierge somehow rolled her eyes without rolling her eyes, her whole body moving in just a particular way, rising slightly, shoulders floating up, while her eyes stayed fixed forward. Nice trick.

Natasha pretended not to notice. Paid the girl. Got their key. Her smile never wavered. 

As she walked away, she put her arm around Bucky’s waist. She’d pretended like this with Steve once. That had been so much easier.

Less personal.

“Ground floor,” she told Bucky softly, just as tired as she sounds. “That way.”

It was a short walk. Thankfully. Natasha’s smile fell as soon as they’re out of the lobby. When they reached the room, she pushed away from Barnes’ side and stalked to the bathroom. Pulled off her shirt. Threw it on the floor.

Red blotted the fabric.

Her wound was bleeding again. Popped two stitches. A wince; she’d hoped she was wrong. Nothing to do for it now but wipe it up, tissue and water first, then heading back into the bedroom and digging into their bag. Disinfect. Gauze pad. Tape.

It’d do.

“You okay?” Barnes asked. He stood by the window, eyes on the street outside if they were on anything. His expression was etched in grim lines. When she didn’t answer, he added, “Up to whatever’s coming next, I mean.”

Natasha rummaged through their duffle bag, pulled out a clean white shirt and pulled it on.

“What’s next?”

She moved carefully. Bed, left side. Shoes off. Laying down, she couldn’t contain a sigh. Exhaustion could sound a lot like relief. Grudging relief. A few hours of rest. It would have to be enough.

“Natasha…?”

“You can take the chair or the other side of the bed. It’s all the same to me.”

He turned away from the window then, a deep line between his brows. His eyes were pale.

“Get the lights when you lay down, either way. I need to get some sleep.”

A moment passed, silent as Natasha stared at the white ceiling. The wallpaper was the same as in the lobby. Queasy pink-coral-peach and white. Natasha shut her eyes against the colors. 

She could tell through her lids when the lights went out, and could tell when he sat on the other side of the bed, the way the mattress shifted under his weight. Not touching her—he kept his distance, a presence she could sense but not feel.

Eyes open, she saw him sitting up beside her in bed, back to their headboard.

Headlights flashed through the window— _ another bed, another room, decades gone. The Soldier stretched out beside her. His face was so handsome when he relaxed, unguarded in a stolen moment. Natasha curled into the crook of his shoulder, her arm thrown across his chest— _ and Natasha rolled over on her side, putting her back to Barnes and the window.

  
  
  


An institution in ruins: before the Revolution, the facility had been a manor home, rich Imperial opulence reclaimed by the people, restored and repurposed into a school for some of the most valuable agents of the Communist regime. Starkly utilitarian Soviet outbuildings stood in the main building’s shadow, both now overgrown with climbing roses. Pink, mostly. The blossoms small and densely crowded. Amazing they’d survived without tending.

Barnes opened the gate. Not even locked. Took a few tugs to get it moving, but the hinges hadn’t seized up from rust.

“Guess someone’s using it.” Voice a murmur, Natasha pulled the car through with just enough gas to keep it moving up the drive. The sound of her tires on gravel was louder than the engine as she rolled around to the back of the house.

There was another car parked behind the kitchen. Small, black sedan.

“Looks like someone’s home,” Barnes said as he approached. Natasha climbed out to meet him.

“Let’s hope so. Otherwise we came all this way for nothing.”

“Only one way to find out.” He rubbed the back of his neck, squinted thoughtfully into the bright daylight. He hadn’t slept well. Neither of them had. “You ready for this?”

“You really have to ask that?”

“So let’s get this over with.”

Inside, the kitchen was a brown dim. Big enough to feed dozens easily, most of it covered in dust. The windows were streaked and thick with dust. Long tables and counters, huge stove and ovens. Almost all of them, all blanketed in more dust.

But there in the corner, one of three huge sinks stands clean, one of the stoves with a fresh teapot set out. Small piles of dishes. Three cupboards showed signs of use.

Natasha walked through the almost abandoned space, her steps measured toe to heel like a dancer as she circled around one of the big prep tables. Not hard to track the occupant from there, follow the footsteps tracked through the debris to the west door and into the hall beyond.

She half expected memories to wash over her like they had when Wanda played them for her with nightmarish clarity. She expected to see ghosts. But here in these halls, with dingy light spilling through windows half papered over, she didn’t find herself haunted.

She thought of walking with her head down. She remembered learning to dance and learning to shoot. She remembered learning not to flinch. Not to hesitate. She remembered killing on command.

But they were all just memories.

Birds had gotten inside the house now. They fluttered away as Natasha and Barnes approached, tucked away in corners and nesting in the edges of window frames. They chirped softly and shit on the fine wood floor.

Wasn’t hard to find what they were looking for at all.

The door stood just slightly ajar, cracked open for them. 

“Think we’ll have a repeat of Sterelny?” Barnes asked softly as Natasha pushed the door ever so slightly with her fingers.

“Can’t rule it out…” Natasha said in return. “But I don’t think so. I don’t think—I can’t picture any of them coming after her.” If there was anyone in the world Taras wouldn’t turn on, it was her. “Stay sharp, either way.”

He nodded.

The door swung easily under Natasha’s touch.

“I wondered if you would come. One day.” Madame B’s voice had never been strong, not overtly. You weren’t afraid of her because she was loud or threatening. But there was a crack to it, a confidence. “Something or other would bring you back to me.”

The suite wasn’t in the same state as the rest of the house. Not clean. Not well tended. It was in a different kind of disrepair, and it smelled like perfume and sickness. Brown paper covered the windows, all but the very edges of the panes, where sunlight streamed in through the cracks, casting the rest of the room in deeper shadow.

Natasha’s eyes adjusted to the darkness in an matter of second, took in the scene: an old woman sat on a heavy sofa, white hair falling in wisps around her face. Her skin was pale and thin. Brittle. One girl sat with her, a tea set on the table before them.

“I know,” the Headmistress said. “The years have not been as kind to me as they have to you. You think I do not see it in the look you give me?”

“I didn’t try to hide anything.”

“Good. Smart.” She picked up her tea cup and sipped it primly, showing stained teeth in brief flashes behind her thin lips. “Always smart.”

A gesture to the girl. “Leave us. We have things to discuss. But do not go far.”

The look Madame B shot Natasha all but dared her to protest. All but. Because she did not actually believe Natasha would stop her.

Natasha glanced at Barnes. “Follow her. Make sure she doesn’t try to contact anyone.”

The girl, dark eyed and dark haired, small and graceful but compact—a gymnast. She left without a word.

Barnes frowned, hesitated while the girl walked past him.

“I can handle this.”

Convinced or not, he left. Pulled the door shut behind him.

“I did not expect when you came that you would come with him. You knew better, once.”

“I know well enough to know when I need backup.” Natasha fired back. “If you knew I’d come, did you know why?”

“I knew you would come because you were one of the best investments we ever made, and a good investment always returns.” Her teacup found its place back on the saucer with a ceramic click. “The formula—we had so little, but it was not was wasted on you.”

“Yelena might disagree.”

“She disagrees with many things. Quarrelsome girl.” Thin lips pulled into a twist of a sardonic frown. “She will grow used to disappointment.”

“You don’t sound impressed by my replacement.”

“She would like that.” More harshly. Then, “But she is like you in some ways. Like you when you were young. So full of anger. But she’s less hungry. Children her age… she was not even born when our country was great. She tries to recapture a dream. She does not know what it is to fight for it when it is in your hands.”

Snorted: “Kids these days?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps also she is less smart.” 

Natasha tapped the arm of her chair, lips pursed. “I hope you don’t think you’re going to skate through this by flattering me.”

The Madame pulled her housecoat closer around her shoulders, fiddling with one of her rings. A preening old bird ruffling her feathers. “Of course not. But you haven’t asked what you’re after.”

“Taras—where is he?” Sure, they could pretend that it was that easy. Natasha didn’t expect to get an answer.

And she wasn’t disappointed. Madame B scoffed, put a theatrical air of bitterness in her voice. “Why would I know that? Whatever he’s up to, he did not deign to include me in it.”

Tense. “And you expect me to believe you don’t know what’s going on because he didn’t tell you? I know you better than that.”

“It may shock you to know, but I have retired. I have only one girl with me now.” Brittle fingers touched her necklace. “She’s as much a hospice nurse as a bodyguard.”

“My condolences.” Dryly.

“Have you come here for answers, or to mock me?” A misdirect.

“I want to know what Taras was after. The two of you hid your secrets in my body. I want to know which of them he came back for.”

“No gratitude. And still so hungry.”

“Is that why you hid it in me? Because I was hungry.” Bitter words. Natasha’s voice tasted bad in her mouth as she said them. Her jaw shifted.

“Why we hid it in you? Natalia…” The Headmistress’s eyes glinted out of her aged face, sharp and clear. “Is that what you think happened? That  _ we  _ did this to  _ you _ ?”

Silence, the only answer Natasha had for that question. The edge in the Madame’s voice, the fact she asked that at all, it raised the hair on the back of her neck, a chill portend.

The quiet didn’t last; Madame B gave up a softly knowing chuckle that carried all the malice of a witch’s cackle.

“Oh, Natalia. Time may not have touched your face, but it’s made you soft. It was your idea. It was all your idea—the world was coming down around our ears, and you knew that everything we’d worked for was at stake. You volunteered to hide it, to keep it safe in the one place you knew you would protect. You chose to carry our knowledge.” Another brief pause, as pointed as her laugh had been. Then: “And you knew that the best way to keep it safe was if even you didn’t know where to look for it.

“And that, Natalia, that was what made you the best. You knew what needed to be done and you did it. There was never any hesitation.”

Her thin lips skinned back from yellow teeth.

“That is why Taras came to you now. That is why he had to take back what you have been keeping safe all these years. And that…  _ that _ is why he wants you back.”

Swallowing, tense. “I thought you said Taras didn’t tell you what he was after.”

“I don’t need him to tell me. I know him, and I know you.”

“You know me,” Natasha echoed her. A snort. A twitch of her fingers. “If you know me so well, then you know why you’re still alive.”

“Bluffing?”

“Am I?”

“You pretend to be a hero. Following Captain America like some kind of a do-gooder.” Distaste, the way a mother might observe that a child’s hoodlum friends encouraged her to shoplift, ruined her expensive shoes. “But I know who you really are.”

“Then you know I don’t bluff.”

“I know you would rather not kill me.”

“Rather not isn’t the same as won’t. There’s a lot of things I’d rather not do. You know as well as anyone—I still do them, if I have to.”

“If you have to. You do not have to kill an old woman. I’m no threat to you.” Madame B pulled at her collar, adjusted her sleeve, then her ring again. “My only bodyguard is not even here. She’s off with your muscle. Yours is a bit bigger than mine.”

“That’s your plan?” Natasha stood, arms still crossed, and moved toward the papered over window. “Show me your belly because then you figure I won’t kill you. I’ve gone straight. I wouldn’t kill a poor, weak old woman.”

Madame B’s lips twisted, her head turned to follow Natasha as she paced the room.

“You’re right, I don’t want to kill you. But I could.” They both knew that, both knew it intimately. The Madame herself had overseen the training that made sure she could pull the trigger even on an unarmed, helpless target. “Or I might not want to kill you, like you said. I might have to settle for breaking your back. You’d be paralyzed, but alive. You’d spend the rest of your life stuck here in this room, but it’s not like you were getting out much anyway, were you?”

Natasha glanced back at the Headmistress, her expression flat. 

“Do you think the girl would take care of you? Help you eat. Roll you over so you don’t get bed sores. Wipe your ass when you shit yourself.”

They held eye contact a long moment.

“But I wouldn’t have killed you. Do you think my conscience could handle that?”

“You’d do that to me, even when I know nothing?”

“Do you? Know nothing?” Natasha didn’t blink, searching the old woman’s eyes.

The porcelain mantle clock ticked in the silence, counting each second that passed. Ten, fifteen, thirty.. Thirty-six seconds passed before Madame B deflated, crumpling in on herself as she answered, “I do not know where Taras is, and I do not know what he was after. Everything we had was in that device. Bioweapons. Conditioning. Cybernetics. Mind control.”

“Information on Barnes?”

“Information on both of you. On me. On more agents than I can count—most of them dead now, or retired.”

She said retired like it amounted to the same thing. Natasha lifted her chin and her brows.

“I do know something, though. Something you may be able to use.”

“I’m listening.”

“There’s a programmer. I work with him from time to time. He was in Africa recently.” The Madame reached for her teacup. “He is one of the few men familiar with our old systems. Very few young men make it a point to learn, now. He would be able to access the information quickly. He would also be able to make sure there was nothing left when he was finished.”

“Is this what you mean when you say you don’t know anything?”

“Do not underestimate me, Natalia. That was Taras’s mistake.”

  
  
  


It was 10:47pm, the club was thumping with EDM, and Kostya was not nearly drunk enough.

Fortunately, he had a wad of bills in his wallet and a plan to take care of that. He sat at the bar, the countertop lit from underneath an icy blue-white, and rapped his knuckles to get the bartender’s attention.

“Another,” he said, pointing at his empty glass.

The bartender nodded—asshole didn’t even bother saying anything before he turned back to a group farther down, taking their orders first.

Kostya leaned over the bar, knocking. “Hey, I said I wanted another.”

One finger raised—one minute—the bartender barely glanced his way.

“Make it two?” A voice cut him off before he could get the bartender’s attention a third time. A sweet voice, all soft and breathy, and nearly in his ear. It had to be to hear her over the  _ bum-bum-bum _ of the base and the chatter of conversation around them.

He whipped his head toward her, half expecting it to be a joke. But no joke, there she was, all dark hair and big brown eyes, full red lips and a little crooked tooth when she smiled at him.

Kostya knocked on the bar again, this time flashing two fingers at the bartender. “And quick.”

Fast forward through the drink and the conversation. It was impossible to talk somewhere like that anyway, and Kostya wasn’t all that interested in what she had to say. Not like he’d come out for thrilling conversation, especially not when it came from a face like that. She didn’t have to be interesting.

Honestly, he didn’t even catch her name.

What he did catch was when she leaned in and spoke directly in his ear again, and in that perfect little girl voice she said, “I live right around the corner. We could get out of here?”

Now, it crossed his mind this could be a trap. She might be after his money—she was probably after his money. So what? When she sounded like that and she wore that dress, short and draped and sequinned, let her try.

Which brought him outside, standing in the street with a pretty girl pulling him into a kiss. Her mouth was soft against his, tantalizingly soft. Must have been something to it, though, because suddenly Kostya was lightheaded.

Or maybe he was woozy.

“Wait…” he said.

The girl was pulling away, shrugging out of his arms to talk to another woman, a redhead who swam through Kostya’s vision.

Money changed hands.

The other’s woman’s voice was deeper and huskier, familiar. “You can keep the lipstick.”

That was the last he heard.

  
  
  


Konstantin Ilyich: purple silk shirt open to reveal chest hair and brows meeting over the bridge of his nose, unconscious, handcuffed to a pipe, hanging from the ceiling. Eyelids twitched. Lips, specked with stubble stubble, pulled back in a grimace. 

Natasha sat in front of where Ilyich’s bare feet hung limp, barely reaching a chair. Barnes was a shadow behind her and to one side.

Not much longer now.

Somewhere nearby, water dripped on a metal surface, a needle sharp  _ plink-plink _ ..  _ plunk  _ keeping irregular time.

A groan.

“Welcome back?” Natasha said, looking up at him. Smudged mascara rode under her eyes. Her makeup was worn and flaked off, leaving her pale and blotchy. She knew how she looked. In this moment, she leaned into it.

“...bitch..”

Yeah, sounded about right. “I have some questions. You’re going to answer them.”

“Go to hell.” He slurred the words, groggy.

“Try not to get too worked up. It’ll take a while for your body to metabolize the drugs in your system,” Natasha said, her voice deceptively neutral. “Even then, you’re gonna have a hell of a hangover.”

He glared at her, the chair shifting and wobbling as he balanced on his toes. An attempt to take the strain off his wrist. “Is that supposed to be a threat?”

The drip continued.

Natasha didn’t make threats.

“Where is Taras Romanov?”

Ilyich barked a laugh, forced, theatrically derisive. The chains around his wrists jangled as he leaned forward. Macho posturing. He looked down at her, and he tried to project a sense that she was in over her head—as though he was the worldly one here, and she didn’t even know what she’d stumbled into. “You’re crazy if you think I’ll tell you that,” he said. “He would kill me. There would be nowhere safe.”

He leaned forward, jaw thrust out. The tip of his tongue touched his lip.

“You think I don’t know who you are? Avenger? Hero?”

Echoed: “You think you know who I am?”

All in one motion, Natasha stood, drove her shoulder into Ilyich’s, wrenched his arm hard out of socket. The joint popped, wet. She could feel the bones separate. The chair wobbled as he struggled—

“What the fuck, you—”

“I’m going to make this very simple for you.” Natasha sank back on her heels, then back to her seat. Casual. “You’re going to answer my questions, or you’re going to hang there on a dislocated shoulder while I pull out your toe nails. Your call.”

She reached to the floor, picked up a pair of pliers.

“Really all the same to me at this point. You’re right about one thing; it has been a while.” She met his gaze, her eyes steady, his screwed up in pain. “What do you think? Is it like riding a bike, or can you lose the knack?”

Ilyich’s face twisted up in a snarl of pain. Sweat broke on his face, darkened his underarms. “Fuck you. You’ll get nothing out of me.”

“You know, I can’t say I was hoping you’d say that.” Leaning in, Natasha caught his smallest toe nail in her pliers. His feet scrabbled, chair shaking, jostled his shoulder. A sound caught in his throat, mangled. “But I can’t say I’m sorry either.”

Natasha’s hands moved. Not like they belonged to someone else, it wasn’t that distant, but as though on muscle memory. Her body knew what to do with the least conscious thought. Wedging the tip of the pliers scratched under the toenail. Dead skin scraped away. The nail parted slightly from the bed underneath, only slightly. Ilyich tried to kick out, probably reflexive. That would explain how sloppy it was. Couldn’t rule out a conscious attempt. He wasn’t trained, which in some ways made him harder to predict.

She avoided the flailing easily. Automatically.

“Quit playing, you bitch,” Ilyich said. It wasn’t an answer. Natasha didn’t even acknowledge it. Didn’t acknowledge it, but she heard it. Words that went in one ear, parsed  for any clues, for tells, for content, words sifted from intonation and examined before ultimately being discarded as worthless. He laughed. Natasha tilted her head toward the sound. “What do you think you’re playing at? You think you’ll be safe if he hears what you’ve done? If you go after him.”

“It helps if you don’t move.” Natasha told him. “It helps me, but it’s easier for you too. Hold still. Relax. Let the pain go.”

“Fuck you.”

She pulled the nail, watched it budge. Dry just an instant before it started to bleed. “Just some advice if toughing this out is your move.”

He groaned.

“Natasha?” That from Barnes. “You sure about this?”

Not answers. His words too were sorted, labeled, and set aside without response. Natasha pulled again, the small toenail peeling away from the toe with some difficulty.

Ilyich kicked out a second time, nearly knocked over the chair, both feet going out from under him so his shoulder and his wrists took his full weight for a moment. 

Sitting back in her chair, Natasha let him struggle a moment. The only thing coming from his mouth, muffled curses. 

“You don’t have to do this. We can find another way. Search his apartment... ”

This time, she cut Barnes off. 

“I don’t remember asking you to play good cop.” 

“I’m not playing good cop.” She could picture how he moved in response, his body twisting slightly, turning away from her. Finding something to do with his hand. Probably rubbing the back of his neck. She didn’t look away from her subject to find out. “It’s not very…”—he struggled briefly to find the word before settling on—“heroic.”

“Yeah?” She didn’t blink as Ilyich squirmed. He got his feet back under him, panting as he tried to stand. “I’m not feeling very heroic.”

He didn’t say anything to that, and the silence hit her in a way his words hadn’t.

Barnes hadn’t signed on for this.

She glanced back, taking in his stance, that weird cocktail of familiarity and discomfort, half the Soldier and half someone else. Maybe more than one person. Some of that was probably the person he’d been before, during the war or back in Brooklyn. Some was whoever he was trying to be now, the guy who hid out in Romania and stayed off the radar for two years. That last guy, he didn’t want this life.

“If you want to wait outside, I’ll understand.”

A false start, then: “No. I’m good.”

Natasha nodded, then brushed it aside, a tangent they didn’t need right now.

Ilyich glared down at her, trying to hide fear and pain behind anger.

“Where is Taras?”

A flinch. Anticipation. Tension in his face, his chest, his feet. No answer.

Natasha went for the next toe.

It went like that, slowly. Ilyich cursed. He struggled, but this time he didn’t kick out as she removed another nail. Sweat broke across his body in a thick, oily gloss, smelling of pain and stress in a way Natasha had forgotten she knew. Her stomach twisted at the recognition.

His third nail, she broke. Not planned. He jerked and the nail bent back, then tore, brittle.

Then she went for the big toe. Scraped away dead skin from the thick, discolored nail.

“What are you going to do when you run out of nails?” he panted. “You’re almost half out.”

Like if he could just get through the ten toes, he’d have her beat.

Natasha didn’t hesitate, didn’t pause as she pried the tip of the nail up so she could get a better grip. “You have ten toenails. Ten fingernails. I haven’t checked your dental work, let’s say thirty-two teeth.” Catching to toenail and giving it a tug, a wiggle. Ilyich jerked but managed to keep his balance. “If I get through those… I guess I’ll have to figure something else out.”

“He’ll kill me.” Ilyich fell back on that line.

A firm tug. Bigger toe. Bigger nail. Firmer root.

“Stands to reason,” she agreed. Konstantin Ilyich was good at his job. That didn’t make him indisposible. “Unless I kill him first. But I’m guessing those odds still don’t look great to you?”

His chin quivered. He was one of those people who dimpled when when they did that, irregular pitting appearing under his skin. Normally light olive, now he looked almost green.

Natasha let go of his nail and leaned back, looking up at him. “Unless you have something to tell me.”

His lips parted slightly, cheeks flaccid and hollow. Natasha counted the seconds in drips: one,  _ plunk-plink _ ; two.  _ pluh-lunk _ ; three,  _ plip-plip _ metallic.

On four, she brought the flat side of the pliers to his nail to get a broader grip. The handles were clammy in her fingers, but she held it firmly.

“Wait, I know.” Ilyich broke. Predictable. Shaken. “I know. There’s—it’s an old underground bunker. They used to use it to manufacture secret tanks or something. I don’t know—but I know how to find it.”

Natasha didn’t let go of his toenail, but she did still, her hold relaxing slightly.

“I’m listening.”

He talked. Spilled. Once he started, it all came out in a rush. He didn’t have to hold it back, and so suddenly he couldn’t say it fast enough. Details with only lose organization: general location, approach routes, why he’d been brought there before, what he’d seen while he was there, how his idea of where it had been might be flawed because he was never given coordinates, but he knew where they left from and the general direction, how long they traveled, how long he was away from Moscow—Natasha listened quietly as he poured information over her. Much of it was meaningless, but the rest, Natasha knew how to use. She knew Barnes would too. If she missed anything, he would be taking notes.

She didn’t intend to miss anything.

And as he described Taras’s base, Natasha triangulated the position in her mind. Not just where it was, but how best to get there. Twelve hour train ride, then they’d have to get a car. Something that would be good on bad roads. No problem.

They could do that.

As Ilyich spoke, he seemed to grow smaller. He wasn’t a huge man to start with, but ashen and compromised, he deflated. By the time he ran out of things to say, he was like a doll hanging from the ceiling.

Natasha studied his face, taking in the defeat on the surface, the anger underneath, the fear that fed his anger. Transparent.

“Well,” he said when neither Natasha nor Barnes responded. “Are you going to let me down, you bitch?”

Natasha put down the pliers and picked up her Glock. Her hand didn’t shake as she leveled it on him.

“No!” The word exploded out of Ilyich’s slack mouth. Pure disbelief. “You said—”

“I never said I’d let you go. You’re a liability.” She tipped her head, regarding him as she did the math. It wasn’t difficult. He should be able to follow it. “You’re not worth anything to anyone alive now, and I can’t risk you messaging Romanov. He’s had enough time to prepare as it is.”

“I won’t.” He blurted, bug-eyed. “How could I? You know what he’d do to me. He won’t forgive this, even if I tell him. He doesn’t need… He doesn’t need me. You still might. Just let me…”

“At least this way you get to die in one piece,” Natasha cut into his babble. “Mostly.”

“Natalia…” Barnes said softly. Her name cut through the air and across her back, and Natasha found her cheeks heating. Something bitter lodged in her throat. She waited a brief moment, barely an instant, for him to say more, but nothing more came.

“Widow,” Ilyich said.

On her feet, gun still in hand, Natasha moved in a rush. Pulled Ilyich’s arm away from his body, taking some of his weight, enough to move his arm back into place. It popped back into socket with a decisive sound. He gulped. Then he sobbed.

Natasha turned away. She kept her eyes forward as she stalked toward the door. “Stick him somewhere. If we survive this, we can let him out later.”

She didn’t wait to listen to what happened next. A prickly nausea settled in her stomach, creeping down from the tightness in her throat. The heat in her cheeks was slow to fade, even as she picked her way up out of the basement she’d commandeered for their purposes. The flush stung as she hit cool, early morning air.

Deep breath. Calm. Shame was pointless, especially at this point. She closed her eyes, counted her heart beating in her ears. One _ thrump-throb _ , two  _ thrump-throb _ , three  _ thrump-throb _ , four. Feel it. Name it. Let it go.

Her gaze traveled up over brick walls to the sky. No stars this morning. The light from the city flooded out most of them anyway. The coming dawn was already chasing away the rest, leaving everything grey.

She was still looking up when Barnes joined her a few minutes later.

He circled around her, giving her space. Put himself just at the edge of her vision. Let her see him if she wanted. Let her pretend she didn’t if she wanted. He hooked his thumb through his belt loop.

“What was that in there?”

Natasha didn’t flush this time. The cool morning seeped into her body. “Can we not?”

For a moment, it seemed like he might. The nerves in her shoulders bunched up, ready for the questions. She couldn’t deny he had a right to know. So far, Natasha hadn’t answered a whole lot of questions and he’d followed her anyway.

But instead, he followed her gaze up to the silk soft sky. “Just glad you held back.”

So was Natasha.

Just one more moment and calm, watching the morning slip in. Comfortable, while it lasted. When the sun was up, they’d have work to do.


	8. Interlude

RUSSIA, ANOTHER LIFE 

First impression of the Winter Soldier, Russia’s most feared assassin: he was shorter than Natasha expected. Not short. Shorter. The way Taras spoke of him, Natasha had almost expected a giant, but Taras himself was taller.

_ “Natalia is one of our most promising graduates,” Taras said as he introduced them. The corners of his eyes crinkled under thick brows. “I look forward to seeing what you can do with her.” _

This Soldier was different from the one Natasha would face in the future, after the KGB lost control of him. Less broken. In retrospect, it was probably the closest she’d ever come to knowing what he was like before _ His hair was short, cropped neatly close to his head like so many agents. Hard face. Quiet. His eyes were clear weighing her, the color of a pale November sky. _

_ Natasha didn’t flinch away from his gaze. _

_ “Let’s see what she’s got.” _

  
  
  


_ Hands up. Eyes sharp. Circle right. It was a vulnerable position. Most people wouldn’t have put themselves on the Soldier’s left, would have tried to keep as much room as possible between themselves and that cybernetic arm of his. They feared it. The attack came, broad and powerful, and Natasha fell back on her heels as she dodged it.  _

_ Not ideal. _

_ The Soldier saw the slip in her posture, the way his last attack left her off balance, and he went for it quick as that, instinctive, reaching— _

_ Just as quick, Natasha let the shift in her weight carry her into a roll, kicking out at the back of his knee. _

_ Stumble, tipping forward while Natasha came to her feet behind him, created an opening. Without hesitating, she threw herself at him. Like a dancer launching herself at a partner, knowing she’ll be caught—she caught him, and she threw her weight around him, pulling him off balance before he could recover from the stumble, wrapping her legs around his neck— _

_ Head between her thighs. _

_ The Soldier tapped her knee. _

_ “That was the plan?” he said as she loosened her hold. _

_ Natasha raised both eyebrows pointedly in answer and his grim face cracked in that unexpected smile— _

  
  
  


_ Natasha’s back hit the wall with a gentle force, almost silent. The Soldier’s body blocked the hall beyond from view so he was the only thing she saw before he met her in a kiss. Her lips parted, arms twined around him. _

_ They only ever had minutes like this. _

_ “We shouldn’t,” he said, forehead pressed to hers, nose brushing hers. _

_ “I know.” She smiled at him. _

_ “I mean it. They’ll kill us both.” His hands found her ass, held her up. _

_ “We’ll just have to make sure they don’t find out.” Another kiss, deeper, pulling at his shoulders. “We’re pretty good at keeping secrets.” _

_ “Fuck it,” he said in a breath, and the words sounded so good. _

Natasha never even knew his name.

  
  
  


_ Target practice. Gun in either hand, Natasha fired bullet after bullet in a tight cluster. The Soldier stood to one side, a spectator. _

_ She was armed when the detail arrived, men pouring into the room with riffles and stony expressions. Taras came in last, long coat and tall form casting an intimidating silhouette. His wrists were clasped behind his back. _

_ Something was wrong. _

Should she have fought back then? If she’d acted in that moment, would it have been different?

_ He sighed. Those bushy brows tucked together, creasing into pucker. Dark eyes watched her. For a moment, Natasha thought he’d say something. Tell her he was disappointed. _

_ When he spoke, he didn’t address her. For the security detail: “Take them.” _

_ “No, don’t—” the words burst out of Natasha’s mouth, admitting all at once that they were guilty of everything. _

_ She thought it was the Soldier who threw the first punch. _

_ The fight didn’t last. The team had come prepared. _

_ Natasha raised one gun, leveled it on Taras. “Let him go,” she said. “Don’t do this.” _

_ “Natalia,” he said then, as his men beat the Soldier into submission, shocking him with prods until he was on his hands and knees. “Natalia… you know you can’t win. But you can make this easier. Use your head. _

_ “There’s only one way either of you get out of this alive.” _

It could have been different. It wasn’t.

_ Taras stepped toward her deliberately, one foot rolling in front of the other. Like he was on a stroll. When he was within reach, he held out an open hand for her. _

_ “Make the right choice,” he told her. _

_ The Soldier made a sound of protest. One of the men kicked him in the gut. _

_ Natasha handed him one gun. The other fell to the floor, safety engaged. Taras accepted it. When he hit her, it was with the butt of her own gun, and the world exploded in stars. _

  
  
  


_ Later in the Headmistress’ office, Madame B looked at Natasha with naked contempt. “Foolish,” she said. “I hope you have realized your error?” _

_ “What’s going to happen to the Soldier?” Natasha asked. _

_ “It is yourself you should be worrying about, you stupid, spoiled girl.” Each word curled, the sounds leaving the Madame’s mouth like a curse. “You have endangered yourself, him, our whole operation with your… your… frivolity. You have no idea the position you’ve put us in. And you have nothing to say for yourself?” _

_ There was nothing to say. Natasha sat in still silence under the weight of the Madame’s anger. Her cheekbone throbbed dully. Probably cracked. Didn’t matter. _

_ A minute dragged by, two, three. Then Madame B answered Natasha’s question, but it was not out of mercy. _

_ “The Winter Soldier’s conditioning has deteriorated. Your dalliance shows as much. He will be wiped, reprogrammed and returned to stasis. He will no longer remain active between missions. His value first and foremost is as a weapon. If any level of autonomy undermines that purpose, then the answer is apparent.” Natasha winced at the explanation. “Unintentional as it may be, you have done us a service.” _

_ “Is that why I’m still alive?” _

_ “No,” Madame B answered. Absolute certainty. “You are for the same reason he is. You are an investment, Natalia. We have put too much of our time, too much of our technology into you, to put you away so easily. You will also be wiped and reprogrammed, then you will return to service.” _

_ “What?” She found the strength for surprise then, for shock. “No.” _

_ “Hopefully you’ll remember enough to put aside such childish things in the future.” _

  
  
  


_So many years later, Natasha lay with her back on the cold gurney, ready for surgery._ _“Are you sure about this?”_

_ Numb, Natasha answered: “Do it.” _ _ _


	9. Chapter Eight

NOW

Behind the wheel of their stolen car, Barnes’ eyes stayed fixed on the rutted out road ahead of them. Natasha watched him from the corner of her eye, the way he’d use his knee to stabilize the wheel while he shifted gears, making it look easy. Beyond him, in every window, there was nothing but barren steppe. In the distance, ragged hills transitioned to mountains. Nearer, the apparently flat ground hid rises and shallow valleys, giving the impression of being able to see more than they could.

A hawk took to the air as they rolled by, slowing.

“You ready for this?” Barnes asked for what would be the last time. The words creaked a little in his throat, even when he spoke levelly. 

Natasha drew her feet down off the dash, straightening in her seat. Ahead, she could just make out the shape of a tall antenna tower.

“I will be.”

The car pulled to a stop, tucked between two uneven toes of earth. “You sure? We could still turn back.”

Almost, Natasha said  it’s too late for that. The words caught on her tongue. Her lips twitched toward a smile that’s nearly a grimace. The expression settled, softened. He was right. This was a choice. They could turn around here, go back into hiding. Taras already had what he wanted from them, and with their skills, they could stay hidden.

For a while, they could.

Eventually it would find them. Either directly in the form of hired killers waiting in the stairwell or snipers across the street, or indirectly as Red Room rebuilt itself to fill the power vacuum created by the fall of Hydra and SHIELD, and now the Avengers. The political ramifications would ripple out—those consequences would be far reaching. Natasha could hide from an assassin. She couldn’t hide from the world, and Taras would be free to affect that as he wanted.

Not that there wouldn’t be those who stood against him, but whoever it was, they’d be playing catch up.

Natasha and Barnes could stop this here.

She opened her door and stepped out of the car. That was all the answer she needed to give. The opposite door opened with a creak as Barnes followed her lead. 

Outside, the security wasn’t much to mention. Nothing above ground to see, so why draw attention to themselves by putting up watchtowers or perimeters. What they had done was make sure they didn’t ruin the impression their base was abandoned. No vehicles parked outside. The road was fresh worn, but not heavily. The best defense was not drawing attention in the first place.

That didn’t do much to help the two patrolmen Natasha ran across. Both of them went down without a sound: one to Natasha’s garrote, the other with Barnes’ thick arm around his neck. Another sweep across the main bay doors, then back to the side personnel entrance, as easy as punching a key code.

Eyes up.

Inside the facility: Dim lights and dust. Metal stairs, spiralling down. The distant grinding of machines below.

Natasha’s boots hit the perforated metal landing silently. Barnes followed behind her, covering her back. To the right, a catwalk followed the the wall toward a corridor, brighter lights, offices. Over the rail, they could see a vast, empty space that had once served as the bay for Soviet weapons. Now it held a couple of storage containers.

She pointed toward the corridor with her chin. Got a nod in response. Keep moving. 

They got as far as the hall, slipping easily from the brown and grey of the garage to the industrial green and beige offices and closets before they were made. A pair of Taras’s agents, Natasha’s first look at what their new operation was turning out. Each of them was outfitted with an augmentation—not full prosthetics, but external additions that fit over both of their arms, the skin red from the fresh pins holding them fixed. Both male. Both held themselves like military.

Both hesitated almost a full second when Natasha launched herself directly at the farther guard. Barnes was quicker. He stepped in to intercept the closer before he could help his friend.

The guards were slow. They were new to their new weapons. They didn’t have the experience Natasha and Barnes did. Natasha landed her first punch, then her second, groin then throat. Ducked out of his reach as he made a wild grab. Kicked the side of his knee. As he staggered, she threw one of her Stings.

The Sting hit his wrist and released its charge. Shorted out the augmentation. Staggered the guard.

Natasha acted in an instant. As soon as the shock passed, she delivered a wide roundhouse kick. Her boot heel caught the guard in the jaw, the impact solid. She could feel the force as it traveled through her, and he spun away, falling in a heap. He didn’t get up.

That taken care of, Natasha turned back for Barnes. He held the man by the throat, pinned to the wall. A red swell on Barnes’ cheek showed where his opponent had managed to get a hit in, abrasions fresh but bloodless. Her eye line dropped, and she saw the augmentation battered, beaten so the pins stood crooked and bled, pieces skewed at odd angles.

The guard gasped, grimaced.

Then Barnes threw him bodily against the far wall. He hit hard, the sound heavy. His head bounced off the concrete with a hollow thud and left a red mark.

Natasha’s jaw tightened.

“You good?” she asked him. Brisk. Professional. An excuse to show her concern.

A nod in response. “There’ll be more where those came from.”

Pushing deeper, the sounds of machinery only grew louder. Thumping. Grinding. Hissing. The noise rose up out of the guts of the facility, below and ahead of them. Whatever was happening, that’s where they wanted to be. Natasha led them toward it. One foot in front of the other, with Barnes following on her heels. 

Past a line of mothballed offices, they rounded the next corner and at the end of the hall, the lights grew bright fluorescent. The noise, hard to hear over.. Another catwalk peeked into view, a command station window visible looking down on the unseen production floor.

There, between Natasha and the door, stood Yelena. The younger Black Widow’s mouth was set in a sort of grim pout—about the only part of her face left visible by the visor she wore, a sleek blackened metal apparatus with six red lenses trained on them like a spider’s eyes. Hard to say at a glance if they were part of her now or not. Not that it mattered much, one way or the other. Yelena had been wanting this fight since the beginning, and now that it looked like she was going to get it she turned out all the stops.

Behind her, two men and a hard looking woman in a tight french braid effectively blocked the way forward. The four of them stood ready.

No guns, Natasha noticed. It wasn’t that kind of fight.

That could change.

“We wondered if you’d come,” Yelena said, lip curled in a sneer as she spoke.

“Not late, are we?”

No expression in that visor. “Oh, no—not at all. You’re just in time.” Yelena tipped her head. Her stance said more than her face, square, determined. The lose ease of her cockiness when Natasha first met her was gone, replaced with purpose. Every move now was deliberate. The cock of her chin, sharp gesture of her hand, all entirely focused on the task at hand. There was anger in that precise control. Anger, and fear.

She made a fist.

One of Yelena’s henchmen dove forward, targeting Barnes. Made sense. He was the big gun, the Winter Soldier, and he was also visibly at a disadvantage with his missing arm and sad eyes. Neutralize him, and they’d only have one injured Black Widow for the four of them to deal with. It was good math.

Barnes braced for the attack.

Natasha intercepted it first, combat knife falling into her hand. Too late, the henchman tried to spin to meet her, putting him off balance as her attack caught him under the ribs. His back hit the wall.

Then the whole hall exploded into motion. Natasha punched again, and again, three quick strikes in rapid succession to drive the air out of his lungs before she buried the blade in him. Behind her, she was aware of Barnes as he threw himself into action. A kick like a battering ram threw the other henchmen back onto the catwalk. The woman drew a gun, leveled it in both hands, feet planted wide apart. And Yelena—

Yelena came at Natasha, visor lenses flickering red, but Barnes got to her first. Caught her arm. Whirled her around. Drove his shoulder into her chin and sent her bouncing against the wall.

“Take care of the others.” His arm came up defensively. “Clear them out, then find Taras. I’ll take care of Yelena.”

“You think you’re man enough?” Yelena asked, already recovered. “Some broken toy soldier?”

Barnes didn’t bother to answer. Not with words, anyway, and Natasha had other concerns. Knife Wound was down, but there was a gun in play and the second henchman was climbing to his feet. And Bucky was right: Taras was still ahead, waiting

The gunner got two shots off, one uncomfortably close to Natasha’s ear before going down from a Widow’s Bite, shock dropping her to her knees. On the catwalk, the second henchman went over the rail and fell to the production line floor.

Beyond that, automated arms worked on construction, sparking, shaping, riveting. Machines building machines. At first, Natasha couldn’t make sense of what she saw. The forms were too abstract, especially early on. Raw materials cut. Pressed. Bent. A half second later, she recognized something like the visor Yelena wore. Then an arm, far more complex than the ones they’d seen before, things that rivaled the Soldier’s. Some were more complex. Chest pieces. Legs. There were rows and rows of them, all turning out some new weapon.

There among the other machines stood Taras.

Natasha only recognized him because he kept his own face. Not the face she’d seen days ago. Not the face that had aged in the wind and the sun and the cold. Now, he wore an idealized version of the face Natasha had known decades ago, painstakingly remade in articulated steel. The body was pure invention, tall and sculpted. Metal arms crossed over a metal chest, broad shoulders thrown back. He watched her. Or at least, she assumed he was watching her; it was impossible to tell for sure. The sensors socketed under his glowering brows trained in her direction. They glowed faintly.

Without a glance back, Natasha made her way deliberately down the stairs. There was no element of surprise left to lose. As long as he waited for her, there was no reason to rush. 

“Update?” Bucky asked over the comm, crackling faintly with static.

“Still on plan. You handle Yelena. I’ve got this covered here.”

“Do not get cocky.” The voice that came from behind Taras’s still face sounded like him, but with a flat quality. Not unlike the tinny distortion from Natasha’s earpiece. She could still hear his authority in it. If there were any question about the mind behind that mask, it was settled by his words. “You think I can’t teach you a lesson now?”

“I’ve got things covered here,” Bucky said tightly.

Softly, almost lost in the crackle, Natasha could hear Yelena. “Do not underestimate me!”

Natasha’s feet hit the floor, the sound of her boots lost in the cacophony of manufacturing. She kept her steps light. Cautious. No way of saying what Taras was capable of. “Teach me? Jesus, Romanov, how much of you is there left?”

“Everything that counts, my little Natalia. Everything that counts.”

  
  
  


“Do not underestimate me!” Yelena launched an aggressive combo, right jab, right jab, right elbow, left knee. She focused on his left side, forcing him back as she made him compensate for his missing arm. Good plan. Since she stayed in close, his advantage in reach was either neutralized or wasted. Frenetic, she attacked where it was the hardest for him to defend.

There was no holding back, either. She knew she was going to win quick, or she was going to lose.

He retreated two steps, then two more, one eye on his back for reinforcements while Yelena pushed him with a failed sweep followed at a hectic pace by a spin kick. Her boot glanced off his jacket, momentum slipping past him ineffectively.

Bucky could see himself catching her foot, twisting, forcing her to either give up her forward inertia or let him break her ankle. Hard to do with one hand. Instead, he fired a cautious attack at her knee, winning just enough space to fall back once again. Time was on his side, so Bucky played for more of it

“Playing tag?” Yelena seethed. She launched herself at him off her back foot, throwing herself at him in the same way Natasha had on more than one occasion.

Or not quite the same

They had the same training, similar moves. They’d been selected and groomed by the same eye, at different points in his life. They weren’t the same, though. Different dancers in the same role. Where Natasha was all control and efficiency, her every move measured and graceful in the way a pouncing cat or a striking snake is graceful, Yelena was all raw intensity. And anger. There was so much anger behind each punch, in each kick, every failed throw.

He got his arm up and kept her from locking her legs around his neck. Ramming her into the wall buckled her hold, sent her tumbling to the floor. 

“You’re it.”

Yelena’s head whipped up, hair falling across her face. Bucky couldn’t see her eyes behind her visor, but he didn’t have to to know the the hot blue fury that flashed in them. He could all but feel it on his skin. Her body bunched. Her chest expanded and contracted. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a snarl.

Bucky had just enough time to to fall into a defensive position before she launched herself at him again. Fast. Very fast.

He was faster, falling back and turning to the side, letting her sail past him.

She started to pivot, ready for him as he dodged again, but this time he didn’t retreat. This time, his hand shot out.

Fingers wrapped around the wires connecting her visor to the base of her skull and he ripped them free. She pulled up short in shock, a sudden spasm shaking her whole body. The red eyes of her visor flashed, one then the other, out of sync. Then she dropped. Not like a rock, not completely unresponsive. One leg failed then the other, sending her to her knees where she twitched and swayed.

“Natasha,” he said, and again when there was no immediate response. “Natasha?

“Update?” she asked a second later.

“Yelena’s down. I’m heading for the computers now. Try to buy us some time.”

Static crackled in his ear briefly, then in an exasperated voice: “Easier said than done.”

  
  
  


Back pressed to part of the the machine line, Natasha held her gun close to her body, poised ready to take action while she stole a moment to catch her breath. The injury in her abdomen was a stitch, an aching catch when she tried to move. Listening, she could hear Taras’s heavy footsteps falling at a leisurely pace as he circled around the conveyor belt toward her. Taking his time.

Hurt, tired, physically outclassed, and her only ally was a World War II relic and an amputee, who had his one good hand full keeping whoever else was out there off her ass while at the same time actually getting the payload.

So situation normal.

Taras’s steps paused on the other side of the belt. The weight of his new body seemed to have a palpable gravity, like she could nearly feel where he stood from the way the hairs stirred on the back of her neck alone. A mouse probably felt the same hiding from a cat.

“You’re holding back.” Observed in a voice as neutral as she could make it. Unfazed. Unflustered by his toying with her.

Natasha’s words earned her a laugh. The simulation of a laugh. There was something off about the sound. Something fake. A calculated series of grunts posing as spontaneous humor:   _ Hn-hn-hn _ . “The body is new. I am still getting used to it,” he said. “You seem a good stress test. I am taking notes on its performance even as we speak.”

“Multitasking,” Natasha said dryly.

“Always. It is the only way to stay ahead.”

“You haven’t’ been ahead in a long time. Decades.” Deliberately needling, though off hand as Natasha weighed her options. He wasn’t the only one juggling priorities. She wet her lips. 

Taras didn’t deign to dignify her half-hearted barb with a reply. Instead, he redirected the conversation. “You know, I would love to have your opinion on it. Think of the improvements we could make. This is only a prototype. You could make it better—you could make me better. For old time’s sake.”

A pause to let the weight of his implication settle in before he made it explicit.

“It is not too late for you to come home. You and the Soldier. Join me, and we will make Russia what it always should have been. Preeminent—” 

Natasha didn’t find out what he intended to come after that, surging to her feet and firing twice in rapid succession. The first bullet glanced harmlessly off Taras’s sculpted face. The second hit the palm of his outstretched hand as he raised his arm to protect himself. Needlessly, as the case had it, but it was nice to see the instinct was still there.

Taras dove forward then, driving his shoulder into the conveyor belt and sending the whole line lurching toward Natasha, tipping unevenly. Natasha rolled to the left, scrambling to put more equipment between the two of them. Robot arms made an ineffective fence.

“Should I take that to mean you are still considering, Natalia?”

“Any time, Barnes…” Natasha said softly, as much for herself as him.

Crackling over their comm, Barnes replied: “Gonna be a minute. Try to keep him busy a little longer.”

“It’s a woman’s prerogative to play hard to get, Natalia, but why fight it? You belong with us.” Taras said, speaking over their conversation. 

“Thanks for the offer, but I’m good.” Deadpan.

Enough rest. Natasha shifted her aim to above Taras, firing off two more shots at one hanging fluorescent light, snapping the cable and sending the light swinging toward Taras. Turn to face it. Arm up, taking the impact to the elbow in a shower of sparks and broken glass.

In the same moment, Natasha threw herself at him, using a chair then a cluttered workbench as stepping stones to Taras’s shoulder. He swiveled to meet the attack, too slow to catch her in air. There was no give in the metal neck between her thighs. No sense of warmth. No obvious vulnerability. All she could do was hang on as he bucked under her, large hands pawing at her legs.

No access panels she could pry open. The seams between the articulations in his neck and the back of his head were smaller than those in the Winter Soldier’s arm had been. No luck there.

Natasha let herself drop away before Taras could get a grip on her, flicking a Widow’s Sting against the back of his neck in parting. The charge went off, making him jerk and swat at empty air like a man having a back spasm. Useful to know, but not nearly enough to shut him down.

She rolled away, scrambling behind a press.

“Natalia.” A metallic grind. “Natalia, Natalia… why fight this?” Clicking, then Taras raised his hands, adjusted his neck. The plates slide against one another uneasily. “You’ve already lost everything. You’re not American. You’re not a hero.”

He held a beat then, emphasizing his next words: “You never were.”

“And you know what I am?”

“Black Widow. The Black Widow. The one the intelligence community lowers their voices to talk about and glance over their shoulders. The one they still whisper about in the Kremlin and tell stories about to raw FSB recruits.” The pride came through in his tone. “You belong here. You’ve always belonged here. It was… it was an oversight that let you slip away at all. A glitch in your programming. When we wiped your mind, we took too much and you forgot your loyalty.

“I was a tool.” A verbal shot as she repositioned herself. Distance would have to be her ally in this fight. “One you had no trouble replacing. Look at Yelena.”

A dry, heavy chuckle, still with that fake, forced quality. “Yelena. Yelena, who’s failed me every step of the way. Natalia, you accuse me of trading you for something better. But it’s only trading up if something better comes along. There’s never been better than you. And with me to guide you again, there never will be.”

Play for time. Keep him talking. Every word Taras said was another second for Bucky to get what he needed. 

Natasha stood up, facing her old mentor again. “And make me like you?”

“That will not be necessary. You never grew old.”

Natasha made a sound. Not really a laugh. It was short and breathy, with an oversteeped bitterness. “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

A gear-grinding sound. Another laugh. They’d want to work on their technology, Natasha reflected with some part of her mind not racing for a strategy. This current body was too conspicuous.

But then, didn’t seem like Taras was interested in staying in the shadows.

“Natalia,” he said. “Fishing for compliments is beneath you. You and I both know the difference between you and Yelena. She is not without her talents, but girls like her are not so difficult to find. Hungry. Patriotic. You find them in every neighborhood, and they will be invaluable as we open Red Rooms across the country. But you are rare. Unique. Even without the treatments and your experience, you are a Faberge egg. You do not let go of a Faberge egg, even if you find another.”

Ice water flowed down Natasha’s spine, seeped into her veins. Sharp and clear. Her pulse pounded in her ears

“You’re forgetting one thing.” Tense. Ready. Held ready for an attack. “Faberge eggs aren’t people. And I would rather die than be yours. I don’t belong to anyone. Never again.”

A shudder passed through Taras’s frame. His face, so nearly a mask, rearranged its features into a glower and his shoulders bunched. The articulated plates that carapaced his body shifted, lowering and pulling tight. “So be it,” he said. “Then you will die.”

She expected an attack. Read it in the way his hands curled into fists. Then he rolled his arms and squared his stance, flexed his chest. His red eyes flashed. That’s when all hell broke loose.

A robot welder came to life in a blast of blue fire, swinging out toward Natasha from its position on her left. Dodged. Ducked. Then a belt sander turned to high suddenly behind her, more sound and fury than risk since she wasn’t close enough to get caught in it. A press pounded heavily to life in the far corner, hydraulics hissing deliberately. Another robot arm, this one brandishing a whirring drill, strained against the limitations of its construction as it tried to twist past its reach to flail at her.

In the sudden chaos of sparks and noise, Taras lunged. His fist rose high elbow down, coming right at her.

Fast. Not inhumanly fast. His new body was made for strength over speed, but it still moved faster than anything that big ought to. Natasha fell back out of reach, turning the dodge into a controlled fall, then to a back roll onto to her feet. No counter-attack. She didn’t have muscle memory for attacks like this.

A wide, wild haymaker coming straight for her head. Natasha slid back, circling around a table laid out with a set of massive tentacle limbs. The augment, thankfully, didn’t spring to life but the automated tools around it did, soldering irons and rivet guns reaching for her instead. One of the heated irons came close enough to burn a line across the back of her arm—the tactical fabric took the worst of it, weave melting together but saving her skin.

Taras charged the table itself. Bolted to the floor, it didn’t budge. The unfinished metal tentacles crashed to the floor at Natasha’s feet and the rivet arm tore free and fell with it with a weird choking sound as it misfired again and again.

Space. Natasha needed space. Time. She needed to be able to think.

“You should have accepted my offer,” Taras said. 

Natasha’s jaw clenched. Her teeth ached. There wasn’t time for fear. Not even time for the anger she’d felt before, bubbling up in response to Taras’s attitude. Right now she just had to do this, to focus, to keep going.

She could feel something later.

“Do you regret turning me down yet?” he asked, shoving aside a gurney. It clattered across the floor, adding to the racket. 

Natasha’s hand flew out, Widow’s Stings hitting Taras’s shoulder and neck. The tasers made him jerk. He laughed it off, barely slowing.

“I don't think you do. Not yet. But you will.” He rolled his shoulders. Casual gesture, deliberate, taunting. It changed midway through, became another attack, Taras’s huge foot coming at her. She rolled away again, barely getting out of the way before he crumpled the workbench behind her. “You’re already starting to learn.”

Natasha didn’t reply. A clamp reached for her, the apparatus stiff but determined. A computer terminal to her right went all to static, then flashed through different programs, the display a meaningless mess. The closest thing she’d seen to it before had been standing beside Steve while he confronted what was left of Armin Zola. 

Then the overhead lights blinked out. Other than the eerie blue glow of the computer screen, the only illumination from from the equipment sparking around them.

“You are no match for me physically,” Taras said. In the dim, he moved like a shark. “Your unnatural youth no longer gives you any advantages against me. This body is beyond you even on your best days. And you are not at your best now, are you, Natalia?”

Natasha bit her lip against the urge to ask Barnes for an update. Time. She needed to buy him more time.

She’d know when Barnes had finished his side of the plan.

A clamp swung around. Too slow to dodge it entirely, Natasha took the hit like a clothes line to the chest. She absorbed the shock as best she could, rolling back and sliding under a workbench. Taras had her in his sights. 

“But that’s not the worst part. It’s not just me. It’s all of this. I am connected to everything now, to this whole facility’s computer system. It is all wired to me.”

Natasha snorted. That development was not lost on her.

“Natalia, Natalia…” He gloated, her voice a mechanical sing-song. “None of that matters, though. I’m not going to win because I’m stronger than you, or  because I have more tricks.”

He was almost on her

Grappling hook. It shot from Natasha’s wrist toward Taras’s head, past his left ear as he shifted just enough to the right to avoid having it glance off the side of his head. The hook caught hold of the scaffolding holding up the catwalk above them. Quick tug. Claw secure.

“Tricks you’re running ou—” 

Natasha tapped her wrist for the hook to retract, reeling her in. Natasha ran toward Taras, light on her feet, the retracting cord pulling her ahead faster than her tired legs could propel her on their own. At the last moment, she lept, and struck Taras with both feet to his chest. Impact rocked him back on his heels

Pivoting her momentum, Natasha threw herself across his left shoulder and around his neck, around his body, looping her grappling line around his throat and neck one and a half time, then down under his arm. He reached for her, hands like vices millimeters away from getting a grip as she vaulted off him. 

She landed like a spider, her line wrapped around him as she darted away from his next attack, using a one of the cement columns for leverage as she pulled the cable taut.

Natasha was panting as she skidded to a halt, digging in her heels. She held on with all her strength. 

The line pulled tight enough to deform the metal pieces around Taras’s neck.

And he laughed. Of course he laughed, the bastard.

“I’m going to win,” he said, “because everything you know, I taught you. Everything you are, I gave you. I made you, Natalia.If you will not see that…”

Natasha could hear him straining. The motors in his arms and chest, in his neck, whirred and hummed.

“Then I will take it all away.”

He pulled, walking forward on legs that didn’t get tired, that didn’t feel strain. She could pull all she liked. He dragged her forward.

The grappling hook made a sound, high pitched and alien as the pins bent and ultimately sheared off under the tension.

“Is that all you have?” he asked. Laughed. He was enjoying this. “A spider on a thread.”

Natasha slid forward against her will, the tread on her boots stuttering against the bare floor.

The grappling hook gave way, giving him the slack he needed to get his arm up and yank. She disconnected the cable just in time to avoid being pulled off her feet entirely. Instead, she fell on her back.

“Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps you’re not so irreplaceable after all.”

“Maybe I’m not,” Natasha said.

And then the lights flickered, on, dim, back off, on. 

And Natasha let out a pent sigh. “About time.”

Taras didn’t hear her, or if he did he didn’t give any sign of it. He half turned, his inexpressive face flexing as it attempted to contort in an expression he could no longer make. He looked from the nearest computer terminal—the static flashing in and out, the drive suddenly screaming—to the office above.

The lights came back on, but not the standard overhead fluorescents. These were the red emergency lights, the facility’s analogue back up system kicking in.

“What did you-d-d-d—” he began, but the sound stuck, skipping before it held for a long moment then sputtered out.

Then there was smoke coming from the exhaust fan of the nearest computer, then another, another, the robot arms and assembly lines shuddered and flailed before stilling. Taras wasn’t unaffected. A shudder went through him like a seizure, one arm curling up toward his chest, and one leg collapsing under him, leaving him to topple slowly to the ground.

Natasha climbed back to her feak shakily.

“Barnes,” she said at last. “Did you get it?”

  
  
  


Natasha’s voice came through Bucky’s earpiece. She sounded impatient. He let his head fall forward in relief, then glanced to where Yelena stood at the computer terminal. She’d taken off her viser sometime earlier and her bare face left her looking just as young as she was.

“Yeah,” Bucky answered. “We got it.”

“Do not think this makes us friends,” Yelena said. Sulked. He let her. She’d lost a lot today. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Barnes?” Natasha said, missing Yelena’s half of the conversation.

“We’re good here. All data corrupted. The virus did its job. The only things left are the files we saved.” The ones on his conditioning. Everything else was gone. Destroyed or scattered. He’d be lying if he said it didn’t feel good. “You ready to blow this joint?”

“Yeah.” There was a pause then. He could hear a weird, sick hiccupping sound in the background, almost lost in the static. The silence in that pause was meaningful. “I’ll meet you at the door. Don’t detonate until I’m out.”

“Copy that.”

  
  
  


Natasha pulled out her ear bud, thumbed it off.

On soft feet, toe-heel like a dancer, she picked her way around Taras’s crumpled form. Took it in. Was he dead already? Was there enough man left in all the machine to survive even a few seconds? What about a few minutes? Did the body have enough fail safes to stay semi-functioning, or was it as dead as her laptop had been when the same virus had devastated it?

One of Taras’s red eyes blinked on and off irregularly. 

She crouched down by his head.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said after a moment. There were words. So many words, and so many more feelings that she didn’t have names for, and all of them lodged in her chest, just below the base of her throat. She could feel them there, like she’d choke on them or throw them up. Like she’d swallow them back down. What she did say came slowly, each sound turned over carefully in her mouth like a cherry stone before she spit it out. “Maybe I am what you made me What you taught me to be.”

The light flickered at her. The bulk of Taras’s shell swelled up briefly like it would rise, then deflated again uselessly. 

“A woman who could kill the man who raised her like a daughter.” She said, owning it. She knew who she was, what she intended to do. She claimed it. “Leave him here crippled, trapped, while we drop the whole place on his head.”

Natasha didn’t blink as she studied his immobile face

“Are you proud?”

A moan escaped him. Natasha wondered if it was wishful thinking to believe he heard her despite his broken body, his disabled senses, or to think he was dead or unconscious inside this shell and it was nothing but the batteries running down that kept these little flashes and sounds coming.

What did she think she would get from this? Closure? Catharsis? Did she think Taras would see the error of his ways, or that he would apologize, even if only silently in his own head, for what he had done to her and so very many others? Did it even matter? It hardly felt real. It seemed like he’d lurch back to his feet and come at her again. This was her past, and her past was always there. It would always loom over her.

Taras living or dying wouldn’t change that.

She  drew a deep breath, letting the weight of victory settle on her.

“You should be,” Natasha said at last.

Natasha stood then, straightening and felt the injury in her abdomen protest as her adrenaline waned. She walked through the pain, her hand white knuckled on the hand rail as she climbed her way back up to the catwalk to retrace her steps back out of the bunker. Barnes and Yelena both waited for her when she emerged. She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything anything.

The three of them stood by the car together, comfortable enough in silence while Barnes pressed the detonator and collapsed the entrances, sealing the facility. 

It would be a quiet drive back to town.


	10. Chapter Nine

LATER

Natasha watched the sun rise over Barnes’ chest, through the window of a private box on the train to Moscow. The city was still a long way off. Outside, a smattering of small houses, farmland checkerboarded with vacant fields and scattered woodland passed them by, all touched with peach and grey and gold in the early morning. The houses had been growing closer together for a while now, dark roofs less scattered. There’d be a town coming before long, but for the time being it was all thickets and barns.

Yelena had been left behind at the first town, going her own way. Natasha had no interest in stopping her. Natasha would take the peace she had while it lasted.

The light caught off a pond, turning it into a mirror among the rushes. A few fat geese floated around the edges, evidence of another farm house out of sight.

Barnes sighed. Probably he’d been awake for a while now. Natasha guessed fifteen or twenty minutes at least. Neither of them had acknowledged it, not first thing.

Natasha hummed softly, recognizing that he was there, that he was paying attention.

“Morning?” she said.

“G’morning,” he said. He looked out the window with her rather than glance down.

Small cluster of houses, bushes growing high against their walls.

“Should be in Moscow tonight.” Still a long way from here. “Looks like we’re coming up on a village soon.”

A grunt of agreement. He leaned a little closer, listening, watching the hills scroll by.

“Thought about what you’ll do when you get there?”

Meaning Moscow. She trusted him to follow the question without clarification, and the question behind it. The one she wasn’t asking.

“Back to Wakanda, figured.” He pulled a thumb drive out of his pocket, unassuming. Turned it over between his fingers, dexterous. “If anyone can use this to get my head right, I’ll find them there.

His profile was still mostly in shadow. Stubble caught the light.

“Seems nice.”

“Yeah.” A slight smile. Relaxed. “Probably they could have fixed me without it with enough time. Might as well save them an hour or two, right?”

“All this for an hour or two?”

“Ought to pull my own weight.”

Natasha chuckled, shaking her head slightly. She smiled a little herself. “Thanks.”

A shrug. Barnes glanced down at her. Sitting on his right, she couldn’t see his missing arm. “What about you?” he asked.

“Well… I have a ticket to Sao Paulo. From there, I don’t know. Thinking I’ll reach out to Steve eventually.”

“Eventually?”

“Maybe after a little time to myself. Figure out who I am on my own, what I really want to do.” She smiled, her brow smoothing as she glanced down, deflecting gently. “Isn’t that what they say you should do after a breakup?”

Barnes laughed at that too, a soft sound in his throat, almost a purr. The warmth put the hair up on the back of her neck. Goosebumps. “I think you know.”

The conversation lapsed. Outside the window, the houses started falling into rows. Streets, skewed but orderly. The train slowed. The shift made her feel heavier in the seat. A subtle change. Hedgerows sprung up beside the track.

Natasha leaned her head back.

A minute passed, then another, time seeming to slow with the train. Not uncomfortably.

She could tell he was going to say something before he spoke, the way he inhaled deeper and more deliberate. There was a pause then, a hesitation before he let it out. “I do remember you.”

Natasha went still.

“Some. Not everything. Not always, but enough,” he said. “I remember it was good. The only thing that was good back then.”

The train lurched to a stop. Just a moment. Let new passengers on, let the the ones ready to leave off. Natasha could hear the shuffling in the hall. The motions out there had purpose. The shuffle of people coming and going.

Natasha studied Barnes’ face then, met his eyes. He didn’t shrink away. He looked tired. Hurt. The man was a hundred years old, and she could see it looking at him. All those years, and few of them kind.

She licked her lips.

“It was good,” she echoed him. 

And she kissed him, leaning across the distance separating them in a smooth, easy motion. Unhurried. Her lips passed over his: light and lingering. It had been a long time, but she thought she remembered just how he tasted, just how he smelled, and she savored the way he filled her senses. Past and present blurred together in one moment.

His fingers touched her chin, her cheek. Didn’t catch her, just rested there lightly. 

Smirking as she sunk back to her seat, Natasha caught his hand and kissed his palm too, quick, before she set his hand back on his own arm rest. 

“Don’t forget again.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that. He let her put him back in his own seat, gently disentangling herself.

The train jostled again. Heaving forward. Building momentum to start off again.

“I think,” Natasha said as she looked up at him, “that I need to stretch my legs. Back in a bit, all right?”

He wasn’t fooled. Not even for a second. He knew, but he played along. Nodding: “Right. I’ll see you later.”

“Later.”

Purse in hand, Natasha let herself out of the sleeper suite and slid the door closed behind her. The train car rocked into a trundle left the station. By the time it left, she was on the platform to watch it go. She waited until it was out of sight before she walked away.

  
  


FIN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, friends! Two years ago, when a Black Widow movie seemed like a dream that would never happen, I toyed with the idea of writing the movie I wished Marvel would make. I outlined the basic idea, wrote a chapter and a half then put it down. Since then I've worked on it on and off and revised some things that didn't work, and eventually I finished it. In the end, I still got it before Marvel made a Black Widow movie and I'll take that.
> 
> Hopefully you enjoyed it as much as I did! All the gratitude to the friends who encouraged me and held my hand over the months and months I was writing this. I love you all. This was for you.


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